


Waiting

by heelbruiser



Category: South Park
Genre: College, House Party, M/M, Mutual Pining, Thanksgiving, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-29
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-11-20 23:19:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 22,459
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11345190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heelbruiser/pseuds/heelbruiser
Summary: Stan has only one more week in South Park before leaving for California, and neither he nor Kyle have quite figured out what to do without the other.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> * thought it was obvious, but this fic was written explicitly as an amalgamation of all the stereotypical tropes generally found in south park fics. self-awareness is key!

With the windows rolled down, he could feel the muggy July air whip through his hair. Though slightly humid, it was cool out: a breezy sixty-two degrees, as the summer nights tended to be, and Stan was emboldened by his decision to go sleeveless—even if it still felt slightly vain. Out of the corner of his eye, he glanced at Kyle. His chin was propped on his fist as he stared vacantly out the window, his hat slouched over the shell of his ears. The ushanka was long gone, but Kyle never outgrew needing a hat of some kind; Stan suspected that it was, at least partially, Kyle’s long-standing embarrassment of his hair. No matter how he trimmed it, within it weeks it bloomed back in full volume, sticking out in every direction like a thorny bramble bush. He wore a light smile, but there was a burgeoning frown hidden behind it. Kyle had been rather quiet since Stan picked him up. “You all right?” he asked.

“I can’t believe you already have to leave,” Kyle said. “Summer practically just started.”

Stan frowned himself. “I know, I totally spaced that I’d need to leave early for camp.”

Kyle shrugged and grunted in response. Stan nudged his arm and waited to be met with resistance, though Kyle gave him none. “Hey, we still have a week, dude,” he said, “and you know how much shit we can fit into a week.”

“I know, I just wish I could go with you is all.”

Stan wished that, too. It was their plan since tenth grade—to go to college together. Stan always wanted to venture out west, and Kyle wasn’t opposed to trading in all those snowy days for something more temperate. But where he secured a shiny, full-ride athletic scholarship to play football at UCLA, Kyle would be attending Boulder hardly an hour outside South Park. His family’s finances were bleak since Gerald’s diagnosis, and though he was offered some financial aid, it was never enough. He remembered all those nights where he was woken in the middle of the night by a call from Kyle, and after Stan sleepily requested what he was doing calling him at almost three in the morning, his voice would crack through the speaker when he asked Stan to come over. He would assure Kyle he was on his way as he unlatched the window above his bed and cautiously scale down the house, which was something he’d gotten pretty good at for just such occasions, and with some assistance, was soon climbing up the shutters and ivy vines towards Kyle’s bedroom window. Stan could have just as easily entered through the front door, he was sure, but there was some intangible bond created during a crisis by clumsily ambling through the threshold of a second-story bedroom window that felt sacred. His father was currently in remission and much better after the surgery, but still too weak to work.

Stan ground his hand against the steering wheel, scouring his brain for the right thing to say, which was always just out of reach where Kyle was concerned. He watched Kyle give his phone a few quick swipes of his thumb, tuck it between his legs, only to pick it back up seconds later. It determined him to ensure that Kyle enjoyed himself tonight. It wasn’t as if parties were some rarity among South Park; there was usually one every couple of weeks, but whereas those parties were crowded and ill-funded, everyone crammed together like sardines in a teeny backyard with red solo cups of canned beer, _this_ was a party at Token’s. His parents were on vacation in Switzerland, or Sweden—somewhere in Europe, and he was feeling charitable enough to open their luxurious gated home to the underage public.

Stan slapped Kyle’s knee and gave him a cheeky smile. “C’mon, dude, it’s gonna be fun,” he said. “And I’m personally gonna make sure you pull another stunt like Bebe’s birthday party.”

A mawkish grin melted onto Kyle’s face as he rolled his eyes, leaning into his seat. “I hope his parents don’t have any azaleas they’re fond of.”

“If they don’t, you can always puke in another potted plant.”

Kyle tossed a light punch to his shoulder, his cheeks going bright red, and Stan leaned into it. He was glad for anything from Kyle that wasn’t guilt-inducing pouting, and the memory of the one and only time he saw Kyle truly, sincerely blitzed off his ass greeted him warmly. “And I will be gravely disappointed if you don’t try to serenade me to Sinead O’Connor again,” he laughed.

Kyle glowered as Stan loudly—and very badly—began to bleat the lyrics to ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ on the detour to pick up Kenny. As they pulled up to his house, Kenny leaned on a beer keg with pride outside on the lawn. Both Stan and Kyle got out to help him lift it into the back of his station wagon; Kenny opted to sit in back to ensure it didn’t roll over on the way. “The last thing I want is for this thing to be nothing but fuckin’ foam,” he said. “Especially considering how bad Stan’s driving is.”

“I’m not a bad driver!”

“Oh, please, you drive like a maniac—every time you brake, the entire car jolts.”

“Kyle, am I a bad driver?”

Kyle turned back to look at Kenny, who snickered at his wide eyes. Stan awaited his verdict as he took his time with his belt buckle. “I mean, you _could_ drive a little more carefully,” he said.

Stan scoffed, smiling into the rearview mirror. “Fuck you guys, I’m a great driver.”

“Yeah, keep telling yourself that,” Kenny teased from the backseat. As Stan prepared to pull out, he dug into his jacket pocket and retrieved a black, felt case. Inside was an ornately-colored glass pipe and a pharmacy bottle of ground-up weed, and he leaned across the seat to ask Stan, “Do you mind if I smoke in your car?”

Stan grumbled, “Do you have to?”

“C’mon, I’m pre-gaming! You want a hit?”

Stan looked pensively from Kenny to Kyle, bowing his head toward the latter to seek permission. Kenny was as notorious for getting his hands on the best weed as he was for rarely sharing, even with them. Though the smell of marijuana was nauseating to him, Kyle nodded his head with some reluctance. He could tell Stan wanted to. If it came to it, he could drive instead. He might’ve preferred it that way.

“Kyle?”

“What?”

Kenny goofily rolled his eyes, sparking the lighter with the pipe pressed to his lips as he asked, “Would you like to _partake_ with Stanley and I?”

Stan smiled at him as he reached to grab it from Kenny, who blew a large plume of smoke into the front seat. Smoking was one of his least-experienced fields of teenage mischief, cigarettes or otherwise. The first time he smoked pot was when he was fourteen; Stan found a bag of it in his dad’s office desk, and they retreated to the weathered treehouse in his backyard with the stolen goods in tow. Stan possessed a reserved curiosity as he followed along to a YouTube video on his phone about how to properly roll joints, Kyle along for the apprehensive ride as usual. He left the next morning with little desire to do it again, but Stan became a passive enthusiast, and was in the good graces of the gaggle of stoners that congregated beneath the bleachers. Kyle studied him while he inhaled, steadily blowing smoke through the window, laughing as he let out a tiny cough afterward. “Don’t let him peer-pressure you, dude,” Stan said with a grin.

“No, Kyle, _let_ me peer-pressure you. _Let_ me corrupt you.”

He stared at the pipe crooked between Stan’s fingers as he held it out for Kenny, who waited before taking it. And Kyle shrugged and sighed as he thought _What the hell_ when he reached for it, feeling a dangerous mix of summer whimsy and recklessness—a kind of surreal, innocent nostalgia he’d mock in an independent movie. Kenny leaned over the seats to pat his head like a dog, smirking “Attaboy!” as Stan instructed him on how to take a hit. They sat unmoving from Kenny’s front lawn for the next ten minutes, passing the pipe around until there was nothing left in the bowl but a burnt, brown nub.

On the drive to Token’s, Kenny informed them that Bebe was going to school to be ‘one of those ladies who do make-up and style hair and shit,’ exclaiming loudly when Kyle told him the word he was looking for was a cosmetologist, as well as the fact that he was still kind of, sort of fucking her. Stan and Kenny cackled when Kyle groaned and asked if he could describe it as something other than ‘fucking’—the word always felt so cheap and impersonal to him, degrading, almost, and they lightly ribbed him for offering his umbrage with the term before it could be formally requested. Stan came dangerously close to plowing through an intersection when Kenny also revealed that sometimes, before they had sex, she asked if she could try out a little make-up on him and brush his hair, now sitting at his shoulders, into a braid. “I’m tellin’ ya, I think she’s got some repressed feelings or some shit,” he laughed, “‘cos she _never_ came faster.”

Stan made a polite request to talk about someone else besides Bebe and her lesbian cosmetology fantasies, and the conversation then turned to their other, now former classmates. Kenny bent to deliver a light flick to his ear when he asked, “How’re you handling the fact that Wendy’s moving to New York with Token?”

He watched Stan crick his neck and straighten his back; even though they’d been broken up since sophomore year, she was still a sensitive subject, and Kyle knew better than to so brazenly force the matter on him. Stan insisted he didn’t care—he was happy for her, because she was still a close friend and he wanted what was best for her. Kenny didn’t let up, moaning, “Oh, c’mon, dude, you dated her for like, four years—you’re not just a _liiittle_ bit upset?” Kyle shot him a look in the backseat, and they moved onto discussion of others they held no romantic connection to.

Tweek was going straight into business with his parents, which depressed Kyle because he always thought what Tweek really needed was some distance from them. But he was kind of Catch-22 in that regard: he couldn’t function with or without them. Clyde was taking a year-off from school to ‘find himself,’ whatever that meant. Jimmy was also moving out to California; over the summer he became a viral sensation on YouTube and had an impressive following on Twitter, and was confident this newfound spotlight would help him make the transition to stand-up. Eric, like most of their friends and classmates, was taking classes at Park County Community with no real plans for the future in mind.

“What about Craig?” Kenny suggested. “Either of y’all know what he’s doing?”

“Craig wants to be a stage actor,” Kyle said. “He’s going to Boulder, too. He’s gonna be in their advanced theater program or whatever it is. I think he said something about moving to St. Paul eventually, according to him the twin cities are the next Broadway.”

“Wait, we’re talking about Craig, right?” Stan asked. “Craig _Tucker_?”

“He’s really talented, dude.”

Kenny nodded his head. “That makes sense, actually. Wasn’t he the lead guy when y’all did _Hamlet_ a couple months ago?”

“You mean, was he Hamlet?”

“Both of you are full of shit,” Stan said, “there’s no way Craig wants to be an actor.”

“Well, he does,” Kyle said, very matter-of-fact. “I think he’s gonna do really well.”

Stan felt a strange discomfort at Kyle’s apparently decent relationship with Craig, who, in his company, was still as nasally and surly as he’d always been. Stan knew they were in theatre every year, though Kyle wasn’t much for acting; he lived behind the curtains, manning the lights and soundboards—anything technical, he was doing it. Stan used to attend the plays despite being bored by them, because there was something fascinating to him about the idea of Kyle off the stage, flickering on a subtle spotlight or transitioning the music. He hadn’t gone to the last few, though.

Stan pressed Kyle for more of the details about Craig he was so morbidly curious for when they pulled up to Token’s house, punching in the gate code. When they parked along the concrete pathway, there was already an impressive gaggle of people on the front lawn. Chief among them was Eric; he staggered toward Stan’s car, and seemed to be buzzed already, which wasn’t too surprising given the three of them were some of the last to arrive. They crawled out of Stan’s car as he laid a hand on the hood to greet them. “’Bout time you fags showed up!”

“Just help us with the keg, dickhead,” Kenny spat.

It was much easier to lift to with all four of them, and when they banged on the front door, Stan was surprised to see Butters answer. Barring him from even obtaining his license, Butters’ father drove him everywhere in a suffocating bid of control, whether it be to three houses down for an innocuous sleepover or to the library. His lips were tinged a deep purple, and his chipmunk-cheeks were rosy red when he giggled, “Hiya fellas!”

“Butters, how are—what’re you doing here?”

“Oh, well, funny story, I told my parents I was spendin’ the night at Eric’s!” He swayed in close to them and covered his mouth as he whispered, “ _My parents don’t know we’re here_!”

“Well, good for you, Butters!” Kenny said, puffing out his chest. “Now, please move, ‘cos this shit’s heavy.”

Butters nearly fell over as he swung the door open for them. The four of them toddled through the dim and crowded living room, lit only with a string of multicolored patio lights hung on the walls that made the whole affair both warmly intimate and somewhat creepy. A playlist of lo-fi hip-hop funneled from the sleek stereo speakers—just the right amount of catchy and mellow, yet still danceable. Parting through the bodies, Token greeted them in the kitchen as he led them to a prepared bucket for the keg. Once it was properly buried in ice, Eric panted at Token, “So, what’s our reward, eh? Fuckin’ sweet keg like this’s gonna cost you.”

“What, being invited wasn’t enough for you?”

“You didn’t even help, asshole,” Kyle said, pulling his beanie back over his ears. Eric narrowed his eyes, huffing.

“Yeah, all of us pitched in except you,” Kenny added as he crossed his arms. “You were supposed to give me your share yesterday and you fuckin’ bailed on me, Stan ended up pitching in extra. If anything, you owe him.”

“Ah, fuck you guys.”

Eric fiddled with the tap while Token thanked them for the keg, offering to pay them back if they wanted. Kenny sprang at the opportunity but Stan insisted that this was a gift of sorts—it seemed only fair, given that Token’s house was bound to take a couple blows: stains in the carpet, a broken vase or two. Kyle agreed with him, though Kenny suggested that, if Token wanted, he could just pay _him_ back instead.

“You sure you don’t mind?” Token asked to Stan.

Stan shook his head. “Nah, it’s all good, man. Honestly, I just wanna get drunk and, like, forget I’m a person for a few hours.”

“Well,” Token chuckled, “nothing stopping you now.”

**

Within an hour, Stan managed to lose Kyle. Normally he was a bit of a wallflower when it came to parties and tended to cling at his hip, but tonight he managed to wander right out of sight. Stan saw him briefly in the kitchen with Bebe, the two of them sipping from their cups and laughing about something, but was soon dragged away by Eric to stand as a character witness to Kenny’s bodacious retelling of four months ago when he jumped out a second-story window after a party in Lakewood got busted by the cops. After that was an intense game of King’s Cup in the dining room, which soon divulged into Stan and Eric teaching Butters how to do a keg stand while a rambunctious crowd formed around him, cheering him on. Every second that Butters suckled from the tap was funnier than the last; he managed to go for forty-five seconds before kicking his legs, and Stan was loathed to admit it was over twice the duration he was capable of. “I feel like a big balloon!” he hiccupped, toppling into Kenny and groping at his waist as he plummeted to the floor. It left Stan laughing with such force he feared cracking a rib, and he scanned the room to share the laugh with Kyle, confused when he wasn’t just an arm’s length away.

Though not much for dancing, he did with Wendy when she asked him a little while later, too hazy to care if he pushed the boundaries of an already lukewarm friendship with Token. Her smile was just so infectious. Stan tried not to stare at how the belt of Wendy’s shirtdress hugged her waist, or the bounce of her hair when it wavered off her shoulders, of how soft her skin looked in the red glow; he resolved to enjoy as much of her as would be allowed.

It wasn’t until after midnight that he remembered he was supposed to be the facilitator of Kyle’s good time instead of his own. But he was alone with Lola in the bathroom, a little too comfortable with her fingers in his hair and the taste of Fireball on her tongue, and where he should’ve been thinking about one last drunken house party tryst before shipping off to college, he was thinking about Kyle. Kyle moping in the car. Kyle in the kitchen with Bebe. Kyle alone after he left for school. And it stirred a pain in his stomach not caused by the alcohol. He took advantage of Clyde bursting through the door and promptly puking into his own hands to take his leave, though Lola reached for him when he started down the hall, asking with a sultry pout, “Stan, where’re you going?”

“I’m uh, I’m gonna step outside real quick, I’ll be back.”

Once he closed the sliding glass door, he sighed in relief. It felt good to satisfy the overwhelming urge to suddenly be alone, away from everyone else, before he spotted Craig sitting on the edge of an unused work bench. He gave Stan a cursory glance with a freshly lit cigarette poised between his fingers. “Uh, hey Craig.”

“Hey.”

Stan approached the bench with a careful foot; Craig always was incredibly difficult to read. Stan thought he could count on his fingers the times he’d seen him smile, and wasn’t sure if he ever recalled hearing him laugh beyond an occasional snide chuckle. He was thinking of what Kyle told him in the car, about Craig apparently being a gifted thespian and working toward becoming a stage actor. He almost began to regret poking fun at Kyle when he first joined theatre, because according to him, Craig could cry on cue and was deeply invested in the plays of Tennessee Williams; for his final, he wrote an eight-page essay on the gay subtext in _Cat on a Hot Tin Roof_. Eight pages. Kyle called it ‘compelling’; Stan just couldn’t imagine it. “Can I bum a cigarette off you?” he asked.

Craig rummaged in his pocket and retrieved a dented pack of Marlboro Reds, extending them out to Stan. He took a dizzy step toward the bench and sat down next to him, placing his beer behind him as he examined the label. Though he wasn’t much of a smoker, he preferred light cigarettes, and was a little intimidated by the rich scent they emitted even from inside the foil. He nodded his head in thanks and pursed one between his lips, shielding the lighter from the wind, and breathing in the dark, woodsy aroma before it began to kick in his chest. “Oh shit,” he stuttered, coughing out the smoke. “Those are uh, kinda strong.”

“They don’t call them ‘cowboy killers’ for nothing.”

Craig took an exceptionally long drag and held it as he stared at the glistening pool that took up a large portion of Token’s luscious backyard. Stan turned to eyeball him, too tipsy to care if it seemed weird. He was determined to figure Craig out, whatever that meant. They were never really friends, or all that friendly, really, and there was something about him that made Stan nervous now. He wondered what he was like with Kyle.

“When do you leave?” Craig asked, and Stan was caught off-guard by the fact that he was initiating conversation

“Uh, next Friday,” he said, puffing on his neglected cigarette. “I leave next Friday.”

“Huh.”

“‘Huh’ what?”

“I thought you and Kyle were going to school together,” Craig said. He crossed his legs and took his pack back from Stan, digging out another and lifting the flap of his hat to stick it behind his ear. He couldn’t tell if Craig was drunk or not—he had to be, at least somewhat. He used to be straight-edge and a little antisocial like Kyle, though he abandoned this principle in recent years; now he was notorious for going to parties and fueling himself on solo cup after solo cup of straight, room-temperature vodka without vomiting like a true masochist.  

The warm wind tickled his bare arms, and he felt overexposed in the dark. He scratched at his neck. “We were going to,” he mumbled, “we both got in—y’know, to, uh, to UCLA, but…uh, Kyle couldn’t afford to move out to California. I got a scholarship—an, um, athletic scholarship. They offered him some, but it wasn’t enough.”

Craig didn’t indicate either way whether he found the answer acceptable, and Stan puffed on his cigarette and waited for a rush of nicotine that would make him shut up. The pool carried a new allure. The water was lit from below, sloshing quietly. It seemed to beckon Stan to the edge with the promise of a cool, baptismal bath only a few feet away. Being underwater always made him feel safe and protected, a fantasy of returning to a worry-free life in the womb.

Craig leaned to nab Stan’s drink and said, “I know,” pinching the bottle in his fingers and swallowing it down, and placed it gently in between them for convenience, as if he might do it again. “He told me.”

“Wait—he told you?”

“Mhm.”

“Wait, Kyle told you all…then why did you ask me, if you already knew?”

Craig shrugged his shoulders as he brought the cigarette to his lips. “I like Kyle,” he muffled around the filter. “He’s a nice guy. He was upset, so he talked to me about it. No big deal.”

A hot flush of remorse burned in his cheeks, his ears. That weird, predatory possessiveness he felt toward Kyle sprang up in his stomach. Kyle was _his_ best friend, not Craig’s. What was Kyle doing talking to Craig, anyway? He wondered where in the house Kyle was, what he was doing.

“He thinks you’re gonna forget about him,” Craig said after a small pause. “That you’re gonna leave and he’ll never see you again.”

“He…he doesn’t really think that, does he? Kyle?”

“Kyle’s not really the type to say things he doesn’t mean.”

Stan took his beer and held it in his hands, rolling it back and forth in his palms, hoping the cool condensation would calm the flutter of panic that bounced through his chest. Craig was right about that—Kyle chose his words deliberately, never the kind to fly off the handle and say something he would regret in the heat of the moment. It was a quality Stan had always been jealous of. Inside his mouth, he chewed on his tongue, contemplating the unsavory taste of alcohol and smoke and the pathetic tone with which Kyle’s name fell out of him. _Does Kyle think that little of me?_

Craig shook his head and scoffed, and as Stan peered from his periphery, he could see a small grin in the corner of his mouth. “What, what’s so funny?”

“You two are so co-dependent on each other,” Craig said. He stole another sip, plucking the bottle straight out of his hands while maintaining a vacant-eyed fixation on the two-toned patio tiles before them.

“What do you mean?” Stan asked.

“You and Kyle are like twins, y’know. If you cut the one, both of you bleed.”

Stan sat for a minute and tried not to think about Craig psychoanalyzing him. He thanked him for the cigarette and put it out on the sole of his shoe, leaving his beer outside in search of something stronger.

**

Twenty minutes to two, Kyle found himself awkwardly alone. Kenny stole Bebe from him almost an hour ago, Butters was glued to Eric as he argued with Kevin about the merits of Flaming-Hot Cheetos versus regular Cheetos, and everyone else too drunk for him to even pretend he was interested in a conversation. Of course, he was drunk, too—at least, he thought he was. He courted a point of inebriation he was wholly unfamiliar with, each step heavy like he was strolling on a row of clouds. When he waded through the thinning crowd of bodies, he was relieved to find Stan in the kitchen.

Stan did a double-take when he came up to him and touched his arm, cooing his name as he swooped Kyle into a tight hug. “I’ve been looking for you all night, dude,” he said.

“All night?”

“Yeah, you vanished almost as soon as we got here.”

“Oh, I was—”

“Here, you want a drink?”

Before Kyle could decide whether he did, Stan was mixing a variety of juices into a solo cup, urging him to sit. Despite the open bar stools, Kyle chose the floor. It provided him an excellent view of Stan doting over the concoction on the counter, the low, cherry-red lights from the living room bleeding into the kitchen and casting against his jaw, the muscular ridges of his arms. There were few occasions where Stan concentrated more than when he was doing something for Kyle. Stan quickly swished the contents with a butter knife and presented it to him with a bow.

It relaxed him to be near Stan again. Kyle worried if he didn’t give him some space, he would spend all night as his babysitter of sorts instead of enjoying himself, but from the look of it, Stan was enjoying himself quite a bit. He had that inability to sit still, that bright smiling for no apparent reason.

“I can’t believe you’re gonna be leaving in a week,” Kyle mumbled, peering into his drink. He appreciated the cranberry but thought there was maybe a little too much orange juice, as well as too much vodka, and he could taste each separated liquid burn its way down his throat like battery acid. He wasn’t used to drinking this much; every now and then, they would share the remainder of what seemed like the same, almost-empty bottle of Jameson that Stan kept hidden in his bottom dresser drawer, beneath his mismatched socks and shirts he no longer fit into. The tingle in his lower back became slightly irritating.

“I know, dude,” Stan said. He rolled the neck of a bottle of coconut rum in his hands, smiling that goofy, boyish smile of his. “I can’t either.”

He perched on the edge of a stool and gazed down at Kyle. It had been so long since he’d seen that kind of excitement in his eyes; it was genuine, vibrant, and a welcomed change from his monthly mood swings that came and went. He took a swig of the rum and wiped his mouth on the heel of his hand. “Like, we spent so much time wanting to get the fuck out of here, and now we’re doin’ it.”

“Well, _you_ are.”

As soon as he said it, he hoped Stan hadn’t heard him. From the moment Stan picked him up, Kyle prepared for this moment because he knew it would come, and he wouldn’t be ready. The alcohol was of no help; all his thoughts were cloudy and blurred and vaguely Stan-shaped.

“Oh, Kyle…”

Stan’s eyes melted beneath his upturned brow, and he slithered from the stool onto the floor next to him. Kyle quickly gulped what was left of his drink.

“Kyle, no matter what happens, you’re always gonna be my best friend,” Stan said softly. “A coupla states between us isn’t gonna change that.”

“I know that.”

 He fiddled with the laces on his boots and avoided the soulful, ginger way he knew Stan was looking at him. The too-hard clanking of the bottle on the floor caught his attention, and as he glanced toward the sound, Stan swooped his way into view. There was a tinge of pink in his cheeks; his eyes were glossy and bloodshot. He laid a hand on Kyle’s shoulder, the other still wrapped around the rum. “I am, too,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do without you, Kyle. Really.”

Kyle stared at his shoes. He could get through this if that was all he focused on—his boots. He would be fine so long as he didn’t pay attention to the melancholy lilt in Stan’s voice. He picked at some loose rubber on the sole, sneaking his empty cup to his mouth to hide behind the rim. If he didn’t think of Stan sleeping soundly in his dorm room in his extra-long twin bed without Kyle in the opposite bunk, without Kyle to wake him up as he slumbered through his alarm, he would be all right, and he could manage his way through this conversation and maintain his composure. Stan’s hand gliding down the middle of his back and resting plainly on his spine disrupted all of that.

Stan blinked slowly and smiled. “It’s gonna be fine,” he slurred, inching his face closer and arching his neck to gaze up at Kyle. “It’s gonna be fine, ‘cos I’m gonna call you every night and you’re gonna tell me all about your day, and I’m gonna tell you about mine, and I wanna hear all about who said this dumb thing and who said that stupid thing and all about all the cool shit you’re doing and classes you’re taking and stuff—”

“Stan,” Kyle sighed, his throat threatening to clam up completely. “Don’t—”

“And I’m gonna fly out to see you as much as I can, or, or drive if it’s cheaper, ‘cos I don’t care, I’ll drive every goddamn weekend, even if it means we’re only together for a couple hours and we do nothin’ but bullshit.”

Stan was closing in around him, shifting his feet so he was inescapable, pinning his closed hand against Kyle’s arm and cradling him with the other. He couldn’t resist the inclination to look up, just for a moment, and as he met Stan’s eye, he could see the trace of oncoming tears budding on his waterline. He was still smiling, voice wavering.

“And I’m gonna come see you. I’m gonna come see you and we’ll be together and it’ll be like I never left because I would never, ever really leave you, dude. I love you so much, Kyle, I’ve known you my whole entire life and I can’t imagine it without you and I love you so much it feels like my heart’s gonna burst right out of my goddamn chest—”

“Stan, _stop_.”

Kyle fell onto his back, pressing his wrists to his eyes. The linoleum of the floor was chill and soothing, a great comfort to the violent convulsions he could feel rattling through his body as he defied the impulse to cry—he hated crying. But there was nothing that could stop it from coming, and he knew that, not with Stan hushed over him and crooning to him about all the ways in which he loved him in that sickly, sweet, sentimental way he delighted in tormenting him. Each of Stan’s hands hovered over him like he was an injured animal on the side of the road he had no idea how to save. Kyle’s throat was ached as he sniveled beneath him. He set the bottle aside and slipped his fingers under Kyle’s beanie, brushing the curls of his hair as he brought their foreheads together. And It was all happening much too fast.

He tried his best to suffocate his coughs, wanting to fold in on himself and disappear completely, and they echoed out in pitiful little whimpers. But as much as it hurt, he would be content to continue the rest of his life in this moment—Stan would still be here if he did. He held Stan’s wrists as tears dripped from the tip of his nose onto Kyle, dotting his cheeks and merging with his own.

“I love you so much, Kyle. You’re my best friend.”

 He repeated it over and over because they were the only words he seemed to know.

“I love you, Kyle. I love you so fucking much, dude.”

The two of them were still sprawled out on floor, a tangled, blubbering mess, when Craig stepped into the kitchen with an empty cup. “Oh, Christ,” he sighed as he set his drink on the counter. “You guys are so dramatic.”

He gently wrangled Kyle out from under Stan, taking him by the hand and helping him to his feet, knees buckling as Craig heaved him forward. “Come on, Kyle,” he said. “Come outside with me.”

Kyle wilted beneath Craig’s arm as he guided him to the patio, sniffing as he wiped at his eyes. Stan wished he was sober enough to punch Craig’s teeth in. Now that he was on the floor, weeping, he felt like a turtle topsy-turvy on its shell, unable to turn over and protect his soft underbelly from a world of predators trying to steal Kyle away from him. The back door slid open and they disappeared outside.  

Stan couldn’t believe he was crying. He couldn’t believe he was leaving in one short week, couldn’t believe he was going to California, couldn’t believe Craig had just whisked Kyle away like that, but above all, he couldn’t believe he was fucking crying. That he made Kyle cry. His stomach turned when he realized how dizzy he became. Token’s house suddenly seemed like an ill-lit house of horrors, and he wished he could close his eyes and wake up in his own bed. He tried to calm his breathing and sat against the fridge, listening to its constant hum.

** 

It felt like hours later when he heard, “Stan? What are you doing on the floor?”

He turned to see Wendy standing a few feet from him, her head tipped curiously. She studied him for a minute before her eyes fell, her face contorting into a frown. “Stan, are you okay?”

He was too tired, and too drunk, to lie, and shook his head. Wendy walked toward him and crouched, setting a hand on his shoulder. “Are you crying?” she asked quietly. “What’s wrong?”

The moment he willed himself to stop, he felt new tears prickling in his eyes, and he pressed his forehead to his knees. He didn’t want to cry in front of Wendy—he didn’t want to cry in front of _anyone_. She soothed his hair and tried to sneak a peek at his face. “Oh, Stan, what’s the matter?”

“Nothing. I’m fine.”

“You’re obviously not ‘fine,’ Stan.”

“It’s nothing.”

“You can tell me.”

Lifting his head, he clamped his eyes shut and wiped his arm across his face. Wendy’s expression only made it worse because she was giving him that _look_ —as if he were a beloved pet she was preparing to euthanize. He’d received it from her many times, and though it typically felt condescending, it popped loose the corks that held back the flood. “I’m just, like…I’m gonna…I’m gonna miss him so fucking much, Wendy.”

“Miss who?”

He toppled into her collar bone, bleating Kyle’s name into her cardigan. She let out a tiny _tsk_ , wrapping her arm around him and gently rubbing his back. She didn’t say anything, and he was grateful for it, because he wanted to be devastated in silence. Being held by her gave him some reprieve. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do without him, Wendy. I don’t wanna leave without him.”

“I know.”

“We were supposed to go together, I can’t do it if Kyle’s not gonna be there.”

Wendy allowed him to cry for a few minutes longer before she placed a hand on his cheek, gently wiping his wet face. Over his shoulder, she spotted the near-empty bottle of rum tipped over on the floor. Wendy sighed as she hooked her arms under his, prompting him to standing. “Come here,” she whispered. “I think you’ve had a little too much to drink.”

“Where’re we going?”

“We’re gonna go sit on the couch, okay?”

Wendy brought him into the living room. There were a handful of stray bodies strewn across the carpet, each of them passed-out in a drunken stupor, or very close to it. The music died down to white noise, the string of lights now unplugged from the wall. She helped him step over abandoned party cups and onto the couch, guiding his head toward the arm. “Just lie down for a while, okay?”

He nodded in agreement as Wendy placed a blanket over him and brushed his cheek with the back of her hand. “You’re gonna be okay,” she said softly. He wanted to believe her. She had a penchant for wounded birds, always knowing the right thing to say, no matter how simple. And when she left and told him he would feel better in the morning, he forced himself to trust that it would be. _It’s okay_ , he thought. _It’ll be okay_.

**

He was on the brink of falling asleep when he saw a shadow approaching the couch. Bending down at eye-level was Kyle; his eyes were still red and puffy, but his face was dry. “Hey.”

“Hi.”

“Can I sleep with you? I don’t want to sleep on the floor.”

“Oh, uh, yeah. Sure.”

There was little space, but Stan did his best to make room; Kyle eased onto the couch on his side, faced toward him. His eyelids were heavy, and Stan’s feverish warmth in Token’s slightly-too-cold living room underneath the meager throw blanket made him cozy. He let his head rest against Stan’s arm.

“What did you and Craig talk about?” Stan asked.

“Nothing, really. He just helped me stop crying.”

“…Sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

Stan was harrowed with an irreparable guilt—he could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen Kyle cry before tonight. It was such a rare occasion that they may as well have thrown a parade. The only time Stan had seen him weep with that much force was when he thought his father’s death was imminent. It was his job to protect Kyle, even if that role was self-assigned, and he unwittingly delivered the _coup de grâce_ by telling him he loved him. But he loved Kyle. He loved Kyle so much that he didn’t question the intrusive thought that soon after crept into his brain: _Kiss him_.

When Kyle yawned— _Kiss him_.

The way his eyelashes flickered— _Kiss him_.

When he curled his head into Stan’s chest— _Kiss him_.

Stan gently tipped Kyle’s head away from him, and Kyle stared down at his hand. Should he announce it? Should he just do it? Will it be weird? Testing the waters, he meekly kissed his cheek first; Kyle looked confused, but laughed. He hummed when he returned one to Stan. And they took turns placing small, innocuous kisses on the other—on the chin, the tip of the nose, the corner of the eye. Kyle was so small, so sweet nestled in his arm. He was normally a little hawkish: calculated, aloof, precise in his actions and speech. But he found he could elicit a hidden tenderness beneath that eremitic exterior, to burrow inside with the knowledge that Kyle would reserve it only for Stan. When he unearthed the bravery to kiss him on the lips, Kyle didn’t push him away, he didn’t recoil in disgust. It was dry and delicate and the perfect amount of brief.

He fell asleep with his head resting on Kyle’s, their hands weaved together between them.


	2. Chapter 2

A blare of bright sun greeted Stan when he opened his eyes, and he immediately regretted doing so. His head throbbed; his mouth was sour and dry. It took a couple seconds for him to realize where he was: on Token’s living room couch. He attempted to sit up only to find himself pinned in place by Kyle tucked safely away in his chest, his legs twined around Stan’s beneath the small knit blanket. Sometime in the night, his beanie fell to the floor, and his messy mop-top of curls served as an excellent pillow. Between the spotty memories of the night before, kissing Kyle stood out so vividly, so crisp and clear that he thought he must have dreamt it. He wondered if there was any way he could sneak one to his forehead before he woke up—before Kyle would inevitably ask him, “ _Whoa, dude, what’re you doing?_ ” He didn’t dare try.

On the opposite couch, he caught a glimpse of Kenny snuggled beneath a similarly small blanket. Next to him lay Bebe, brazenly bare-chested, light glinting off the nipple piercings she got for her birthday. Thankfully he wore no make-up or bows, but if Kenny’s previous stories about the things Bebe liked to do in bed were to be believed, he grimaced at the thought of either Token or his parents ever sitting on those cushions again.

At the foot of the coffee table, Eric laid on his stomach, emitting an obnoxious string of snores and rolling on top of a half-eaten bag of chips. He mumbled incoherently through his sleep. Butters slept propped against his side with such serene expression on his face—as if he were in some springtime meadow, flower petals scattering the top of his head, using Eric as the perfect hefty tree to sleep beneath.

Token emerged from his bedroom fifteen minutes later; Wendy trailed behind him in one of his t-shirts, her hair askew in a way Stan was familiar with post-sex, tangling her hands around his arm. He could hear their muffled laughter between a kiss or two down the stairs as they slipped into the living room. “Oh – Bebe!” Wendy hissed.

Bebe sputtered on the sofa, sitting upright and providing everyone a more casual view of her breasts. Stan had to agree with Kenny—they were rather nice. She rubbed at her eyes, mumbling, “I’m uh, I’m up, what?”

“Your… _your_ …”

Wendy hugged her own chest, watching as Bebe glanced down at herself and blushed. “Oh, ha, shit,” she laughed, reaching for the blanket to cover herself. “Sorry.”

Kenny hummed next to her. “Don’t apologize for your beautiful titties.”

“Did you guys have sex on my couch?” Token asked.

Kenny shook his head, sitting up beside her. “No, Token, absolutely not. I would never do that to you.”

Token continued to eye him suspiciously.

“We did _make love_ on your couch, however.”

“Ugh.” 

The two of them snickered as Token retreated to the kitchen, offering to bring everyone a round of aspirin. Wendy plopped down on the arm of Stan’s couch and softly pet his head. Even though she was shipping off to Columbia with Token, she still saved room for him. He took his victories wherever he could. “Morning,” he said.

“It’s actually almost noon, but good morning to you, too.”

He could smell the scent of Token’s cologne emanating from both her clothes and skin, his shirt billowing around her petite frame. “I see you and Token had, uh, quite the morning,” he said.

She rolled her eyes and smiled, cheeks tinged slightly pink. “You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah, my head just fucking…ugh.”

“No, I meant, like…are you okay, emotionally?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, when I saw you last night, you were basically flooding Token’s kitchen floor with your tears.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” she chuckled, “‘oh.’”

They both stared down at Kyle, still sleeping with his head pressed against Stan. “Yeah, I’m uh, I’m okay,” he said. “We were just, um…kind of having a moment.”

“I see.”

She gave his head another pat, rising from the arm and picking Bebe’s clothes off the floor, handing them to her. Bebe managed to wrangle on her bra despite Kenny’s hands trying to bat it away, though she seemed much more comfortable when she wasn’t naked in mixed company. He watched Wendy sigh as she pinched near-empty party cups off the floor, stacking them together on the table amongst pizza crust and sticky rings of beer. Stan looked back down at Kyle; though his arm was dead with that terrible pins-and-needles sensation, he wanted to let him rest. He discreetly played with his hair, knowing Kyle would never let him if he was awake, and felt a dull ache in his chest.

It had to be the alcohol, he thought, that elicited those momentary, non-platonic feelings for him, the ones that made him think kissing Kyle was a good idea. But Kyle kissed him back. That was what confused—frightened—him most.

When Token returned to the living room, he gave Eric a hard, abrupt kick with his house slippers. “Get up, tubby.”

“Ah, fuck off.”

Butters sprang forward, yawning happily as he sat Indian-style on the floor. “Well, uh, morning fellas!”

Eric struggled to sit up from the carpet, and when he did, he looked even worse than before—his skin glittered with the sheen of pizza grease and oily chip crumbs, a large pool of drool on the floor and dried on his cheek.

“Thanks for the party, Token!” Butters said. “I sure had a lotta fun last night.”

“Butters, shut up. It was _okay_.” 

“Yeah, I’m sure _you’ve_ been to much better parties, fatso.”

“For your information, I have, asshole. Ones with better booze and a less hostile host.”

Kenny shamelessly rose off the couch, not bothering to conceal his naked self as he searched for his jeans. “It was a damn fine party, Token. One for the books. I’ll help clean.”

“No need,” he said, shielding his eyes. “The maid’s coming in a few hours.”

“Oh, thank God,” Kenny sighed as he yanked up his zipper, “I wasn’t serious about helping.”

“Then why did you offer?”

Kenny shrugged. He sat back onto the couch next to Bebe and asked, “Well, you guys wanna go get something to eat? Waffle House, perhaps?”

They all exchanged reluctant glances of approval; Waffle House was the perfect hole-in-the-wall to lower themselves to. Kenny clapped his hands and smiled. “Nothin’ like some good ol’ fashioned grease to cure a hangover,” he said.

Token and Wendy toddled off toward his bedroom to change, as Eric dragged Butters around the house to help look for his phone. Stan looked down at Kyle.

“Hey,” he whispered.

Kyle stirred delicately against him, obviously disinterested in waking up. He wasn’t a morning person, and he wasn’t a drinker, so getting a grumbly, hungover Kyle felt like an insurmountable feat. He moaned low in his throat each time Stan tried to remove his arm, curling deeper beneath the blanket. “Kyle, dude,” he hushed, giving him a gentle jostle. “C’mon, buddy, get up.”

“Hmm.”

“Get up. We’re going to Waffle House.”

Kyle twisted away from him, pressing the heel of his hand to his eyes. He breathed in deeply and yawned before sinking back against Stan. “Where’re we going?” he asked, his voice tight and dry.

“Waffle house, dude.”

Kyle groaned and muttered, “Oh, joy.”

**

Stan sat near the window; in his booth, he was squeezed against Kyle, Kenny, and Bebe. He could see Butters hanging off half of his seat next to Eric, though he didn’t complain. Wendy and Token both ordered their coffee black, which struck Stan as strange—Wendy loved her coffee when it was mostly cream and sugar. Kenny’s suggestion of having everyone order one of everything to pass around like the last supper was quickly struck down. Butters asked if they had chocolate milk, for which Eric called him a baby, though when the server informed them they _did_ have chocolate milk, he ordered the same thing. Kyle only asked for water.

They scanned their menus briefly when a different waitress came to the table. She was a tired, stout woman in her fifties, obviously uncharmed by catering to a group of indecisive teenagers. They all ordered a slight variant of the same basic dish except for Kenny and Eric, who both ordered extra bacon and pancakes. She stared at Kyle expectantly, and when he didn’t look up from the table, she asked, “What about you, hon?”

His head jolted upward, and he looked to the others as if he only just realized where they were. “Oh, uh, I don’t—I’m not ordering anything.”

The waitress nodded her head. When she collected their menus and walked toward the kitchen, Kenny hunched on the table. “Oh, uh, Token, by the way,” he said, “I may or may not have left a little, eh…souvenir in your couch.”

Token furrowed his brow, sipping his coffee. “What kind of ‘souvenir?’”

“The, uh, the latex kind. Y’know, for certain bodily fluids.”

Wendy scoffed, “Kenny, that’s disgusting!”

“What! All I’m saying is, you might wanna pass your maid a little extra something as a tip. I mean, unless she’s into that kind of shit.”

“I doubt anyone besides Bebe is into your used condoms, Kenny,” Token chided. Wendy delicately elbowed him in the ribs, Bebe blushing when she shyly withered into Kenny’s shoulder. She had a strange grin on her face as if she wasn’t all that embarrassed.

“Yeah,” Eric agreed, a thin film of milk above his upper lip, “God forbid she catches your disgusting poor-people cooties.”

“That’s not nice, Eric,” Butters said.

Kenny rolled his eyes. “Well, she’s already got ‘em if she’s a fuckin’ maid.”

Stan tuned out their bickering and turned to Kyle; his eyes seemed to be glued to the salt shaker, his hands sitting in his lap. “You all right?” he asked.

“Hmm? Oh, yeah. I’m good.”

“You didn’t order anything.”

“I didn’t want anything.”

Stan looked him up and down before deciding to leave Kyle alone. He was probably just tired, and if he prodded any further, it would only irritate him. Stan leaned his head against the window. The warmth of the sun shining through the glass was pleasant alongside the cool air from the ceiling fans, and he couldn’t wait to stuff himself full of shitty diner food and crawl in his bed at home. It would probably be the last time he’d get to eat like this in a while.

Everyone ate in silence. They were all famished after last night, chewing intently as if they were destined to executed afterward. Bebe lamented the fact that it would ruin her diet when Kenny assured her she didn’t need to worry. He kissed her, and she playfully shoved him away for getting syrup on her neck. Butters didn’t complain when Eric stole one of his biscuits and even offered to give him the other. Token fed Wendy tiny bites of his waffles. Occasionally, Stan felt a quiet pang of jealously when he watched them together. He felt it briefly last night, and he felt it again when Token licked away the dribble of syrup at the corner of her mouth as she giggled. But he was happy for her. And Token, he supposed. He hadn’t realized just how hungry he was until he spooned the runny, plastic eggs into his mouth, suddenly the most delicious thing he’d ever eaten. His meal was disgusting and glorious in all its gooey, fatty goodness. 

Kyle insisted he wasn’t hungry, though Stan caught him eyeballing his food more than once. Listening to the cross-talk across the table, he began to rearrange his plate: he pushed half of his scrambled eggs, the hash browns not covered in ketchup, and his bacon to the other side, giving them a generous sprinkle of pepper. Stan nudged his arm as he grabbed an unused fork and presented it to him.

“Nah, thanks, but really, I’m not hungry.”

Stan waggled the fork in front of him; he wasn’t sure why Kyle was pretending _not_ to be starving when he very obviously was, and knew he wouldn’t bother changing his mind after everyone else had already ordered. Kyle made his decisions and stuck to them, even if he would regret doing so later. That didn’t mean he couldn’t find a loophole, though. “C’mon,” he said. “You can have some of my pancakes, too.”

He grinned when Kyle reluctantly took the utensil from him, picking at his eggs.

“So, what’re you two gonna do when you break up a month into moving to New York together?” Kenny asked. Bebe admonished him with a slap on the wrist; Token laughed as Wendy narrowed her eyes. “We’re not going to break up in a _month_ , Kenny,” she said sharply.

“But you _do_ recognize there’s the impending possibility that you will eventually?”

Token said, “Well, of course,” and it didn’t sit right with Stan; he couldn’t decide whether it was on his own behalf or hers, but Wendy was unfazed.

“Just because it might not last forever doesn’t mean we don’t want to make it work for the time being. It was both of our first choices, anyway,” she said. “It was just coincidence.”

“Coincidence?”

“Yes. Coincidence.”

“What about you and Bebe?” Token asked. “You two just gonna _break up_ now, since there’s a chance you might later?”

“Me and Bebe aren’t gonna ‘break up,’ because we’re not together.”

Bebe tried to hide her wounded frown, shrugging in agreement. Stan never quite could place his finger on the pulse of their relationship—if it could be called that. They had such a strange symbiosis; they both got what they wanted from each other, which most often seemed to be late-night sex when Kenny got off work. But he was oddly sweet to her.

“You’re just afraid of commitment,” Token said, and Wendy nodded her head.

Kenny scoffed. “You think I’m _afraid_ of commitment?”

“Yeah, I think so.”

“Damn, Wendy,” Eric said, “you got Token whipped real fuckin’ good. He sounds just like you.”

“Oh, shut up.”

They picked at the remains of their food; Kenny was the only one who cleaned his plate, stopping just short of bringing it to his face to lick it clean. Stan was only able to stomach one pancake, the other two bogged down on his plate with butter and syrup. Kyle picked at them like a bird, only taking little pieces around the edge. He felt a strange desire to feed him the way Token did Wendy, imagining himself licking the maple from Kyle’s mouth, swiping his tongue across his sugary lips, and felt his face become very hot—scalding, almost, the way his coffee had been. He thought he must still be drunk, knowing full-well he was alarmingly sober.

Token was still in a generous mood when he covered the bill. Outside, they lingered in the shade of the overhead for a few minutes before heading to their cars. The sun was really coming down now, and the stifling heat awaiting them in their vehicles was almost incentive enough to stay in the restaurant all day. Kenny reached into his pocket to retrieve his pipe, and Wendy quickly demanded he put it away. “Are you insane?” she hissed. “In broad daylight?”

“Oh, it’s not like someone at fucking _Waffle House_ is gonna call the cops on me.”

“And you’re so sure?”

“Wendy, I guarantee you half the people here have records way worse than mine. Besides, it’s legal here now.”

“Not if you’re under twenty-one! And _definitely_ not in public!”

Eric grunted as he heaved himself off the window pane. “Well,” he said, “if all you guys’ are gonna do is bitch like a coupla old maids, I’m taking off.”

“Oh, poor us,” Token mocked. Eric shot up both his middle fingers as he strolled across the parking lot. Butters clacked his knuckles together, ambling off the curb toward him. “Butters, you need a ride?” Stan asked.

“Oh, no thanks, Stan! I’m going with Eric.”

“Like hell you are.”

“But you said you would last night! We live on the same street, you don’t have to go out of your way or nothin’!”

“Fine, fine.”

With Eric signaling his surly departure, Token gave Stan a quick, hard-slap-to-the-back hug. It was stilted, and a little awkward, but he appreciated the sentiment. “If I don’t see you before you leave, good luck,” he said, “California’s cool, I think you’ll like it out there.”

“You’ve been?”

“On vacation, but yeah.”

“Just don’t turn into one of those goddamn surf-hippies,” Eric yelled from his car window. “You know how much I—”

“You hate hippies,” Stan said, “yeah, I know. I got it.”

“I swear to God, Stan, if you come back in a tie-dye t-shirt listening to The Beach Boys, I’m gonna put you down for your own good.”

“I got it.”

“Like Old Yeller, Stan, just out in the backyard with a—”

“He gets it,” Kyle sneered.

Eric grumbled something about Kyle being ‘an ungrateful Jew’ as Butters climbed in the passenger seat of his Jeep, waving goodbye to them through the window. Only Wendy and Bebe indulged him with a wave back, and they split up toward their respective cars.

Bebe joined their group in Stan’s car. Kyle blared the air conditioning to their immediate relief; a thin layer of sweat was already sitting on everyone’s skin. Kenny began to pack a bowl, Stan waiting patiently for him as he flipped through the radio. When he reached back to take it from him, Kyle asked, “Aren’t they going to drug test you? You know, at school, for football?”

Stan felt his blood chill, sweating even more profusely through his shirt than he already was. His hand was frozen in the air. “Shit,” he muttered. “Shit, shit—I didn’t even think about that.”

“Relax,” Kenny said, withdrawing the offer. “It’s not like they’re gonna say, ‘Hey, piss in this cup,’ the moment you step off the plane. Besides, I’m pretty sure weed’s legal in California, anyway.”

“It’s not,” Kyle said flatly.

“Well, it should be.”

“You don’t smoke that often, do you, Stan?” Bebe asked.

He shook his head, feeling immensely, criminally stupid.

“You’ll be all right, then,” she said, patting his shoulder. “I’m pretty sure it only shows up in your system for a week, so you should be fine.”

“Plus, I bet they look the other way with this kind of shit,” Kenny quipped. “Weed’s nothing. Just don’t start doing coke.”

**

Dropping Bebe off took longer than expected; her house was only ten minutes away, but that didn’t include the additional ten minutes they sat parked on the street as she and Kenny engaged in a prolonged back-and-forth about when they expected to see each other next. Eventually, she invited him to come inside with her, and Kenny thought it over for all of two seconds before he shook Stan’s shoulder and thanked him for the ride as he climbed out the door. Bebe gave Stan a little wave as she got out, and wished him the best. He watched them bump hips on the walkway and turn to nod their heads as he drove off with an unsettling emptiness in his stomach.  

Neither he nor Kyle said anything while they cruised through the neighborhood; he could sit with Kyle for hours without speaking and not be bothered, but today, there was a sinister mist of fear looming over his silence. Kyle slouched in his seat, pulling his beanie even more snug over his hair every minute or so.

“You wanna go back to my house?” Stan asked. “Play some video games, just chill out?”

“Nah, you can just drop me off at mine.”

Stan stared him up and down in the passenger seat. Everything he was afraid of happening was now coming to fruition—he couldn’t even remember the last time Kyle had willingly forgone staying at his house. He asked, “You sure?” and hoped he would think about it and laugh, realize his mistake, and say _Actually, yeah, let’s go to your house._ He didn’t.

“Yeah. I’m sure.”

Stan pulled up to Kyle’s house, sitting quietly for a minute and staring out the window. It was difficult to imagine not living down the street from him anymore, of Kyle never being more than a block away if he needed, not climbing through his bedroom window in the middle of the night. His stomach was still in knots. When Kyle gave him a loose smile, he asked, “Why did you say that thing earlier? About them drug-testing me at school?”

Kyle furrowed his brow as he unbuckled his seat. “What do you mean, why did I say it? You obviously weren’t thinking about it.”

“It’s just—why did you bring it up then instead of yesterday?”

“I didn’t think about it yesterday.”

Stan held his stare with a blooming nervousness he’d never felt around Kyle before. He couldn’t tell whether he wanted to kiss him or make him cry again—something, anything other than this detachment, reservation. He asked, “Are you sure you’re okay?” when Kyle’s hand curled around the door handle, making no attempt to move it.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he said, “why?”

“I don’t know, you’re acting kind of weird today.”

“ _I’m_ acting weird?”

“Yeah, I mean, you didn’t want to eat when we went out, you were pretty quiet the whole time, and just—”

“I’m fine, dude,” he said. Kyle smiled again, brighter than before, and Stan couldn’t shake his gut-instinct that it was fake. “See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. See you tomorrow.”

Kyle walked toward his door without looking back at him like he always did; Stan spent the rest of his day in bed, the covers pulled up over his head, letting the insulated heat and familiar noises of his house prevent him from staying awake for too long.  

**

Once he shoved his laptop into his backpack, Stan stopped to admire the barren landscape of his room. The dresser drawers were mostly empty of his clothes, any incriminating mementos either destroyed or well-hidden in case his parents were curious to snoop; he couldn’t even remember the last time he could see under his bed. In his head, he mulled over the mental-list he kept once, twice, three times with the nagging sensation that he was forgetting something. He couldn’t remember before there was a knock at his door, and Kenny and Kyle invited themselves inside.

“Our little Stanley!” Kenny bleated, wiping fake tears from his eyes. “Whatever will we do without you?”

He smiled, hitching his backpack on his shoulder and asking, “What’re you guys doing here?”

“Did you really think we wouldn’t come see you before you left? Like some kind of assholes?”

“No, no,” he laughed, “I just figured you guys were busy.”

He watched Kyle linger behind Kenny like a child in a crowded mall, grazing his hand across Stan’s now-empty desk. Despite the weather, he was snug in a winter jacket, the collar propped up beneath his chin. “I can’t believe you’re really leaving,” he said.

“Me neither. It still doesn’t feel like I am.”

“Well, don’t look so sad about it,” Kenny said. “If you don’t wanna go, I’ll gladly take your place.”

“You gonna fake your way through four years of football, then?”

“It’s not like it’s that hard, you throw a ball around knock the shit out of a couple guys. Pretty sure I could figure it out.”

“I’m so glad my only apparent talent is that easy.”

Kenny rolled his eyes and grappled him into hug. “Oh, you know I’m kidding,” he said. He rubbed his hand warmly on Stan’s back and gave him a tight squeeze, delivering two gentle slaps to his cheek when he pulled away. “You know I’m proud of you, right?”

“Thanks, dad.”

“Hey, cut the sarcasm for five minutes,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “I’m serious. I’m really proud of you, Stan. You know that, right?”

Something about the graveness of Kenny’s tone caused his throat to shut completely, and when Stan managed, “Yeah, I know,” it came out much more unsure than he intended. Kenny grinned anyway, and Stan felt desperate to be hugged by him again.

His father popped into the doorway and reminded him that they should have left a half-hour ago; he invited Kenny and Kyle with them, if they wanted, but Kenny insisted he should be going. Stan darted his eyes toward Kyle and begged as discreetly as he could, relieved as all hell when Kyle said, “Yeah, of course.”

On the way to the airport, his mother arched in her seat to ask if he forgot anything, and though he reassured her he left nothing needed behind, she came up with something new every couple of minutes. Sitting in the backseat made him feel very small, especially with Kyle next to him. But he was grateful Kyle was there, the aberrant aloofness of the past week disappearing when he whispered in Stan's ear about his father's terrible driving. The hour-long trek to the airport went by much too quickly. As they winded through the packed parking garage, part of Stan wished they were just kids again, small and little in the backseat, being driven to the movie theater or the mall; he couldn’t decide if he was truly ready to give this up: snickering over silent text messages to avoid talking in front of his parents, sharing a set of ear buds, Kyle’s shoulder always pressed to his.

His mother didn’t cry until after he checked his bags, and she batted at her wet eyelashes as soon as it started. She gave him a long hug and kissed his cheek, and he disallowed himself to be embarrassed. His dad cleared his throat and said, “We’re, uh—we’re really proud of you, Stan,” as he pulled Stan into his side, forcing them both to bear the awkward brunt of physical affection. But his hug from Kyle was the only one he cared about—his shaky hands around Stan’s neck—and if it weren’t for the thousands of eyes from every which direction, including those of his parents, he would have stayed in it much longer. Maybe he never would have left it.

When Stan gazed at him from the other side of the security line, Kyle fought the impulsive itch to dart to the nearest airline counter and buy any ticket, anywhere, just to be at his side. He debated his chances of simply sprinting through—he was quick. Maybe he could pull Stan in for one more hug before a TSA agent tackled him. Sharon and Randy waved to him again, and Stan gave his parents a fleeting nod and glance before returning to Kyle.

They were always supposed to be on the same side. It was always supposed to be the two of them getting on the same plane, leaving their parents and their friends and their shit-hole town together, and Stan would sit by the window and tell him all about how small everything looked, knowing Kyle refused to admit his fear of heights.

All he could do was smile and wave. Stan sadly smiled back, waving with his free hand, the other still clutching to the laces of his shoes.


	3. Chapter 3

The car ride from the airport was excruciating—he hadn’t slept well the night before, was feeling more irritable than normal, had almost missed his flight completely, and the last thing he wanted (or needed) was Shelly dismissively introducing him to her boyfriend as, “My jock turd of a little brother.”

He lied down in the backseat, hoping to sleep through the hour drive, though would have no such luck: Shelly seemed determined to hit every bump and pothole in the road if not for the sole pleasure of exacerbating his headache. Her boyfriend, whose name he’d already forgotten, was as dumb and loud as he looked.

“So, you’re the quarterback everyone’s been talking about, huh!”

“I guess.”

“Sweet, bro. I used to play ball in school too, high school and college. Coulda gone pro too, but. Bad knees.”

Stan groaned, “Uh-huh,” and, “Oh, cool,” intermittently, only half-listening to ‘the good ol’ days’ of this guy’s life with steady annoyance. Stan was just surprised he apparently went to college. He wanted to throw up when his sister gushed about wishing she could have known him then considering she would’ve been in kindergarten.

By the time he managed to slip into something resembling sleep, they were passing the mall and only ten minutes from home. Shelly woke him by barking, “Get up,” and flicking his forehead. Minutes after the two of them went into the house, Stan stayed in the backseat with the door open, soaking in a very dizzying, upside-down view of home. Everything looked the same, and for once he was glad to say so.    

He wasn’t hungry, but picked mirthlessly at his sweet potatoes and green beans—he didn’t want to upset his mother by rejecting the meal she’d spent all day, by herself, in the kitchen slaving away over, and he especially didn’t want her to remind him of this. His father was already passed the tipping point; he was on his sixth beer in two hours, well on his way toward a seventh. Only five minutes could go by before his mother made another pointed, passive-aggressive comment about Shelly’s older boyfriend, which quickly resulted in his sister igniting a shouting match across the stuffing and cranberry sauce. He reached for his phone in his pocket to text Kyle.

_my family is driving me nuts_

Though he hadn’t expected it, Kyle responded immediately.

_Mine too._

_You know how I feel about Thanksgiving._

_my sisters new bf is a total douche_

_hes also 34_

_I bet your mom is having a fit about it._

_literally everyone is shouting rn_

_super uncomfortable lol_

_Yikes._

_my dad keeps asking if i wanna throw the football around w him_

_Let me guess: he’s using the phrase “the ol’ pig-skin” quite a lot._

_GOD YES_

_how did you fucking know_

_:)_

_:’)_

_i wish i was having thxgiving w your family again_

_Trust me, you don’t want to be here right now._

_why??_

_Ike wants to start a Young Republicans club at school._

_He’s also considering renouncing his Judaism._

_This dinner has basically become an intervention._

_omg_

_He also mentioned something about Alex Jones and chemtrails, or whatever._

_no he didnt_

_kyle no he didnt_

_My mom started crying and he asked if she was “triggered.”_

_oh god_

_I hate this so much._

_it’s probably just a phase dude!!_

_he’ll grow out of it_

_Man, I hope so._

“Stanley, what did I say? No phones at the table!”

Stan limply held up his cell phone and frowned. In the past few years, his mother implemented a ‘no electronics at dinner’ rule that was regularly disobeyed, but she took it seriously during the holidays. He hoped maybe she would roll her eyes with an irritated understanding, but she continued to glare at him. “But it’s Kyle.”

“I don’t care _who_ it is. Kyle’s not going anywhere, you can talk to him later. Can we please, just for an hour— _one_ hour—act like a family?”

Stan sighed as he returned to his phone.

_my mom is yelling at me to get off my phone_

_you wanna hang out later?_

_Yes._

_I’ll text you as soon as my mom’s done crying._

_lol sounds good_

**

Kyle laid on the couch waiting for Stan to arrive. He could hear his mother still playing damage-control with Ike in the kitchen; though she was no longer weeping, her voice frayed between indignation and heartbreak. In the recliner, his father passively tried to engage him in conversation about dinner, about Ike, though Kyle could only halfheartedly reply through a series of _Mm-hmm_ s and _yeah_ s. He was too busy with the article ESPN had published a month ago, _The Top 30 Freshman to Watch for this College Football Season_. Stan was ranked at number two:

**_2\. UCLA QB Stan Marsh_ **

**_Recruiting rundown_ **

_Park County HS, South Park, Colorado. No. 5 overall recruit this year._

**_Best attribute_ **

_Marsh spent the beginning of the season sitting behind senior quarterback D’Angelo Harris, a fourth-year starter and offensive leader. The Bruins took a rare risk allowing a freshman QB to takeover after halftime in lieu of their backup during last week’s game versus Texas A &M to incredible reward. Once he was on the field, fans took notice of his exceptional arm. Quick, accurate, and with excellent downfield passing ability, Marsh was integral in their comeback to defeat the Aggies 17-10._

**_Likely role for season_ **

_This spring, Marsh is battling Luke Anderson for the role Harris will leave behind. Anderson will put up a big fight, but Marsh is all but guaranteed to put himself in position to be a four-year starter in Los Angeles._

**_Long-term outlook_ **

_At only 6'2" and 186 pounds, Marsh is certainly one of the smaller players but is very fast and athletic—he bears considerable similarity to Minnesota great Fran Tarkenton. Though not typical of a freshman, he stands a very good chance of being called to start this season, and if his performance against A &M is any indication of his promise, it will be with good reason. Marsh needs to put on some weight, but his impressive arm and versatile ability to scramble for yardage makes him a force to be reckoned with on the field. UCLA has secured themselves quite the talent in this young QB from a small town in the Colorado Rockies. _

Kyle read, and re-read, and re-read the snippet multiple times. It never became any less strange, having Stan described to him by strangers, people who didn’t know him beyond his strength and his speed and the way he could beguile an entire stadium with his mussed hair and pink cheeks; they didn’t know Stan kissed him a week before he left.

Stan had started once since the article was written, and he did just as well as expected. Kyle streamed his games online every Saturday regardless if he actually played. Sitting up beneath his blanket in the dark, he’d ignore its entirety save for the brief few moments the camera may pan to Stan. The announcer would gush about his collected demeanor, his perceptive eye in looking down defense, but to him, Stan often looked like he might faint at the first given opportunity.

A text notification from Stan disrupted him as he read the line about him needing to put on weight for the eighth time.

_outside_

Kyle was overwhelmed to see Stan again—nervous, excited, apprehensive, relieved all at once. When he stepped off the porch, he got out of his car and did a half-jog over to Kyle, laughed, and pulled him into a tight hug. It was friendly and quick; Kyle hadn’t realized how deeply he missed being hugged—not that he was a huge fan of being touched in general, but it was different with Stan. Everything was.

Settling into his car, Kyle asked, “So…what do you wanna do?”

“I don’t really care,” Stan said. “I just wanted to get out of my house.”

“Me too.”

They drove aimlessly through the neighborhood for a few minutes; Stan soaked in the familiarity of home. It was a relief to be back in a place where he knew where everything was. Los Angeles was nice—he loved the sun, loved his proximity to the ocean, but somewhat impossible to find his place in it all. In the presence of born-and-breed Californians, as well as the wide array of more impressive transplants, he felt very much like some dumb hillbilly from the mountains. Words he’d never heard, people he’d never seen, food he’d never known existed—all of it was a stark reminder that he wasn’t where he belonged. Like it or not, which he didn’t, South Park was home. 

“You know what I want?” Stan asked.

“What?”

“City Wok.”

“City Wok?”

“Mm-hmm,” Stan smiled. “All I want right now is a thing of their orange chicken.”

“You’re hungry?”

“I didn’t really eat much earlier.”

Kyle shrugged in his seat, leaning back. City Wok was probably the only place open on Thanksgiving; they were always open on holidays. It made him feel bad for Mr. Kim, but Chinese food on Christmas was by far his favorite seasonal ritual, and he wasn’t willing to part with it. By the time Kyle stopped think about roasted duck and spring rolls long enough to formally agree, Stan was already turning onto Main Street.

They ordered two meals of chicken to go and ate on the hood of Stan’s car, parked in front of Stark’s Pond, overlooking the clear water and thin sheets of ice that floated along the surface. Between their bites, they hashed through the obligatory catch-up questions: _How are you? Do you like school? What about your classes?_

It was weird to Kyle that any conversation between them necessitated such pedantic politeness; Stan informed him that professors tended to provide him some under-the-table leniency with his classwork, though he was genuinely trying his best not to take advantage of it. He took a creative writing course initially just for the credit, but it’d since become his favorite class. A week ago, he went on a date with a girl he met at a party. Her name was Stacy. He said, “She’s nice,” and that was all he had to say. Kyle ran their names together in his head: Stan and Stacy, Stacy and Stan. The alliteration was pleasing, he supposed.

Kyle wasn’t hungry, and let Stan pick at his food after finishing his own. He used Stan’s famished silence to fill him in on everything in South Park, which meant the sum-total of his news was, “Everything’s the same.”

The only difference was Kyle now worked at the same gas station as Kenny, out by the hardware store and they often worked the night shift together from six to midnight. Kenny was a wonderful distraction from the lingering, Stan-shaped emptiness that withered in his chest. Craig was, too; they frequently saw each other on campus and would usually hang out in the library together, quietly enjoying the other’s presence, talking bullshit, passing the occasional judgement on unsuspecting guys in the computer lab. He was hardly older than Kyle, but served as an elder mentor of sorts, seeing as he had known he was gay significantly longer than Kyle did. The closet felt less empty with someone else inside. 

Between the routine of work and his commute to school, Kyle spent the past three months in a delicate, boring fugue-state—punctuated only by leaping at the opportunity to run errands for his mom, or the off-chance Ike would indulge him by watching a movie together.  

“What about you, dude? You like Boulder?” Stan asked.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” he muttered. “It’s okay.”

Stan frowned slightly as he forked a hunk of chicken. Kyle tried to sound more optimistic, less soul-crushingly unfulfilled with his station in life, but he could his effort was dismal at best. Part of him wanted Stan to tell him how much he would love UCLA, how much he would love the people and the location and how different it would be if he was there, just so he could be mad at him for saying it. But he didn’t pry about his classes or credits, and Kyle was grateful.

“I shouldn’t be eating this,” Stan muffled with his mouth full. “But it’s so fucking good.”

“You could use the extra calories, apparently.”

Stan lowered his eyebrows, tipping his head as he sucked the sauce from his fork. He looked so adorably childish—legs splayed out across the car, that goofy, confused smile, his cheeks flushed pink from the wavering wind. Kyle threw his head back and sighed. “Do you ever Google yourself?” he asked.

“Do I ever _Google_ myself?”

“Yes, Stan, do you ever go onto Google, type in ‘Stan Marsh,’ and read what comes up?”

Stan laughed quietly as he set the Styrofoam container behind them. “No, I uh, I don’t,” he said. “I actually go out of my way not to.”

“Well, I do—or, I don’t.”

“You Google me?”

“I’m…kind of embarrassed by how often I do.”

Stan grinned and bumped against his shoulder. It felt so good to have Stan’s arm against him—even if it wasn’t his now-famous throwing arm. “ESPN did an article about you,” he said.

“They did?”

“Well, it wasn’t _about_ you, but you were included in it. It was like, the thirty best freshmen in college football. You were number two.”

“Who was number one?”

“I don’t know, some wide-receiver from Notre Dame, I think.”

Stan nodded thoughtfully; Kyle couldn’t tell whether he was upset or relieved at not being number one. Maybe he’d kicked that incessant desire to be liked by everyone while he was at school. Maybe all the attention he received only worsened it. Surely, he searched himself at least once, probably opening an incognito tab on his computer with a narcissistic curiosity for the praise that fell at his feet from strangers all over the internet. “They called you ‘small’ for a quarterback,” Kyle said. “Said you need to put on weight.”

“That’s what my coach told me.”

Stan didn’t seem too interested in talking about football, but it was all Kyle could think about. How could he not? This was his entire future. He was definitely good enough to end up in the NFL if he played his cards right. If that’s what he wanted. Stan was quick and strong. He was also incredibly smart, even if he didn’t always think so. Over the course of their friendship he attuned himself effortlessly to Kyle’s little ticks and quirks, and never needed to be told twice—not that this was pertinent to football. Kyle imagined Stan in a Broncos jersey. One that was his own.

“Do you get nervous before your games?” Kyle asked.

“Do I get nervous?”

“Yeah. Do you?”

Stan shifted on the hood, pulling his knees toward his chest and wrapping his arms around them. A barrage of different emotions slowly came and went from his face, lost in thought, mulling over the question with an uncertain answer. He looked at Kyle and quietly huffed. “You have to promise not to ever tell anyone I told you this,” he said. “Like, ever.”

Kyle wanted to be offended at the accusation that he would betray Stan’s trust, but instead he quietly said, “I promise.”

“I mean it, Kyle. No one. Not even Kenny—God, especially not Kenny, he’ll—”

“Stan, I promise.”

Stan sighed. His fingers fidgeted against the top of his hand, and even after opening the door to this secret, he looked apprehensive to actually walk through it. He sucked on his teeth; his mouth opened as if to say something, but immediately clammed up. Kyle became impatient and uneasy just looking at him. “It’s okay, dude, whatever it is,” he said, gently touching his back. “You can tell me, I won’t say anything.”

Stan sighed. “Did you watch my first game I actually got to play?” he asked. “Against A&M?”

“Where they put you in after halftime?”

“Mhm.”

“Yeah, I saw it,” he said. “Why?”

Stan gave his neck a minor twitch. He unwrapped his hands and instead laid his palms on top of his knees, immediately letting them fall toward his shoes before again curling them around his legs. “Well, after it was over,” he said, “y’know, everyone’s fucking patting me on the back and telling me how good I did.”

Stan allowed himself a hollow grin at the memory, though it disappeared soon after. “But once I was alone I had, um…I, uh, had to sneak off to a bathroom and throw up. Like, just…until there was _nothing_ inside me, it was so bad. I couldn’t breathe. And then I couldn’t stop crying for some reason—I couldn’t even see my own hand in front of me, I was crying so hard. I, uh…I couldn’t stop for fifteen minutes.”

Kyle tried not to wince, but Stan’s sudden loss of confidence feels like a punch to the stomach. “You…cried?”

Stan grimaced, needlessly ashamed of himself. He straightened his back for only a second before hunching over again. “Yeah.”

“Why?”

“It’s…I don’t know. It felt like I was gonna die, but I think I was just having a panic attack, or something,” he said. “Like, when I’m just _out_ there, when I get out there and just do it, I’m fine. But once I _realize_ I’m there, I just—I don’t know, it sounds so goddamn stupid.”

“It’s not stupid, Stan.”

“I just…all those people? In the stadium? You see that on TV and think, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of people,’ but when you’re _there_ and every single one of them is looking at you? …It’s fucking terrifying.”

He shook his head and laughed sheepishly, trying to play his admission off as something insignificant, trivial. It died out when he looked at Kyle to see his worried frown. Stan wordlessly slid off the hood of his car. Kyle remained in his spot, eyeing him as he took small steps forward with his hands shoved in his hoodie. He was looking out at the pond.

It hurt him to think of Stan suffering, anxious and nauseous, alone. He wondered if Stan may soon find it too much, and crawl back to South Park with his tail between his legs and quietly return to Kyle; he couldn’t afford UCLA without his athletic scholarship.

Stan sighed. Pulling his hands from the pocket, he wrestled both his hoodie and shirt up over his head, triggering an immense curiosity from Kyle; the skin of his uppers arms was sun-dappled in light freckles amidst an impressive tan. Stan already looked stronger with his shoulders blades sharp across his back, the muscles in his arms flexing as he stiffened against the blustery wind. It was no wonder the women in the stands fawned in his presence. He was a precious marble statue, every detail of his form carved painstakingly slow and careful to capture such perfection, the pinnacle of any museum—haunting and beautiful and utterly untouchable. Kyle became concerned when he began to undo the buttons of his pants. “Dude, what’re you doing?” he asked.

“I’m getting in.”

“In—in the water? It’s November!”

“So?”

“ _So_ , it’s gonna be freezing!”

Stan ignored him as he kicked off his clothes and left them sitting on the damp, muddy ground. The sun had already set behind the trees, and the only remnant of it a fading orange glitter reflecting off the surface. Kyle crept off the car, waiting, watching him closely as he approached the water’s edge in nothing but his boxers. He heard Stan hiss as he dipped his right foot in; he drew back for a second before moving forward. As he waded in at his thighs, he stopped in place, his arms tucked in surprise at his sides like a child. He arched his head to offer Kyle a shaky smile.

Kyle’s heartbeat pounded in his throat as Stan calmly gave himself to the pond. He lingered near the wooden bench, observing as Stan ventured a few feet further until he was actually swimming, carrying himself in staggered little strokes. Cold shock, hypothermia, unconsciousness and then drowning—all the things that could suddenly go wrong. He saw the headline now: _UCLA football player tragically dies over holiday_.

“Stan, seriously,” he barked, “you should probably get out.”

Sailing further away, Stan kept his back to him. The same flighty, woozy sensation he had when they said goodbye in the airport welled in his stomach. His refusal to say anything was the most unsettling. He flashed Kyle a brash grin as he drew in a large breath and sunk beneath the surface.

Kyle expected him to pop back up only a few seconds later—he was certainly just dunking his head in. Just getting his hair wet. Every second he was under made his stomach twist. Five was already too much. Ten was really pushing it; he was obviously to be trying to goad Kyle in after him by pretending to drown. It was exactly the kind of sick joke Stan would find hilarious. Fifteen spurred his feet to move. At twenty he ran in, fully-clothed.

The water jarringly encased Kyle in his sweatshirt, his blood plummeting inside him as if he fell from the peak of a roller coaster. In the summertime, he wouldn’t even get in the pool if it was less than eighty degrees; this was so cold he couldn’t even fathom the temperature. Between his shortness of breath, he tried to focus on carrying himself toward the ripple that resounded from where Stan went under.

When he was halfway there, a floating mess of black hair teetered on the surface, Stan emerging moments later. Teeth chattering, he gave him a confused smile. “Kyle?”

Wading helplessly in the pond, Kyle stammered while Stan paddled toward him. “Wait, are you wearing your clothes?” he asked.

Kyle no longer felt cold; the steady burn of unbridled rage now kept him warm.

Once they were stumbled up the muddy bank together, he heard Stan laughing between his shallow, hitched breathing. And It rubbed every single fiber of him the wrong way.

Kyle shakily shoved him toward the wooden bench, growling, “What the fuck is the matter with you?!”

Stan was unfazed by his shouting, shivering and laughing in equal ferocity. He seemed sort of dazed and disoriented, searching for his clothes. “Did you think I was drowning?” he asked, his tone suggesting it a ridiculous conclusion.

“What else was I supposed to think?!”

“Oh, dude…”

Stan shuffled toward him, laughter still hidden behind his lips, his arms wrapped across his chest. “I’m sorry!”

“Fuck you, you’re sorry!”

He gleamed at Kyle, his eyes soft and kind. Stan shook his head as he chuckled, shook, Kyle yelling, “What’s so goddamn funny?”

Stan doubled toward the car, scooping up his clothes, bleating, “You look like a wet cat!” between his gasps for air.

Kyle felt incredibly stupid as he slunk into the passenger seat of Stan’s car, dripping from head to toe in ice-cold pond water. He wrung as much of it as he could from his sweatshirt, but felt uncomfortably damp in his jeans. Stan gave him another pitiful laugh and blasted the heat. “I can’t believe you jumped in,” he said.

“I thought you were drowning, you dick.”

“I wasn’t. But I appreciate the rescue effort.”

Stan jostled Kyle’s knee and said, “I’ll give you some of my clothes to change in at my house.”

“Oh, _thank you,_ Stan, my savior! My knight in shining armor!”

Stan grinned and started the car, looking very satisfied with himself when he said, “I _am_ your knight in shining armor.”

**

When they entered the house, he heard his mother bustling about the kitchen, busily packing away leftovers and loading the dishwasher. His sister was on the couch with her boyfriend, and she turned her nose up at the sight of the two of them. “Christ, what happened to you?” she asked, looking Kyle up and down with a grimace. Kyle sopped behind him as they walked toward the stairs, trying not to laugh as Shelly’s eye followed the sound of Kyle’s wet boots sloshing up the steps.

They quickly changed into sweatpants and t-shirts. Kyle looked so tiny and shapeless in his clothes, like a billowy scarecrow hung up in a cornfield after crows picked at its stuffing. Stan pretended not to watch him as he dressed; he forgot how blindingly pale the areas of Kyle’s body not routinely exposed to the sun were. “Feel better?” he asked.

Kyle dried his hair with a dirty towel from the floor, and he glowered at Stan before it quickly fell into a reluctant smile. “Yeah,” he said. “Better.”

Stan fell into his desk chair and swiveled in place, still staring at Kyle. “I still can’t believe you jumped in after me, you maniac,” he chuckled.

“Well, you were the one who went all _Breaking Bad_ on me, fuckin’ all, ‘Hey, let me just get in this freezing cold water and not say anything.’ You scared the shit out of me.”

“I didn’t mean to.”

“What was that?”

“What was what?”

“ _You!_ Getting in the water, what was _that?_ ”

Stan shrugged. Truthfully, he didn’t know why he did it, either. He was thinking of all the afternoons they spent as children, splashing their summers away and looking for tadpoles, skipping rocks. It was the place he missed the most since leaving home. Though he’d only been twice, the ocean simply didn’t compare. It was too vast, too deep, too pretty. “I don’t know,” he said. “It just seemed like the thing to do.”

“Well, do me a favor—the next time you’re feeling all whimsical and impulsive, try to aim for something a little less dangerous.”

“Oh, you’re being dramatic, it wasn’t that dangerous.”

“Stan, do you have any idea how fast people drown in cold water? It saps your body heat exponentially faster than cold air, people die all the time because the lack of—”

“Kyle, I’m fine,” Stan said, “I was in for two minutes. You’re overreacting.”

Kyle recoiled on the bed, letting himself be genuinely surprised before he was angry. Stan pursed his lips to avoid smiling. He rolled over to the edge of the bed, and let Kyle playfully shove him away with his foot, repeating this several times; every time Stan approached, he tried to block or knock away his foot, zig-zagging across the carpet, and Kyle sneered with determination as he would push Stan away more forcefully. It amused him greatly, the effort Kyle put into such menial tasks.

“I missed you,” Stan said as he glided toward him again.

Kyle didn’t push him. For a minute, he looked as if he was contemplating kicking off, but let his foot rest on the wheel instead. “I missed you, too.”

Stan lifted from the chair to the bed and crawled toward the pillows. “Wanna watch a movie?” he asked, reaching for his laptop. Kyle nodded his head.

They laid on Stan’s bed, scrolling through Netflix for something to watch. Stan insisted on no documentaries—unless they were the kind of nature documentaries about wildlife, where the narrator was almost guaranteed to be British, no dramas, and no foreign films if he would need to read subtitles; Kyle wasn’t in the mood to sit through another seventies action movie, or the kind of stoner buddy-comedies Stan liked to put on while absently scrolling through his phone. They eventually agreed on _Clerks_ —whenever they couldn’t decide on anything else, it was the movie they defaulted to as it was, oddly enough, Stan’s favorite. Kyle mostly enjoyed it; the use of black-and-white and its blasé dialogue used to strike him as slightly pretentious, but now that _he_ worked at a convenience store, it took on an entirely new poignancy. He wanted to hide his face in shame at how pathetic Dante sounded behind the counter ( _“I’m not even supposed to be here today!”_ ) because he could hear himself saying the exact same thing.

Around the middle of the movie, Kyle slipped into a comfortable half-asleep, half-awake stasis as he watched the laptop rise and fall on Stan’s stomach. They laid against a pile of flattened pillows, Stan’s hands folded behind his head with Kyle resting on his chest; he resented and delighted in how close Stan allowed him to be, never shooing him away, because it always made leaving so difficult. Even through his shirt, Stan’s skin still emanated the cold of the pond, but his bedroom air vent blared just the right amount of heat. It was nearly eight-thirty, and the sun was long gone from the sky. His open bedroom curtains gave way only to the blackened street and the homey, fuzzy light of illuminated windows lining up and down the block. Every couple of minutes he would sense one of Stan’s fingers twirling around a small bundle of curls. Normally, it irritated him when anyone would touch his hair—including Stan—but this felt suddenly very soothing. Relaxing.

He listened to Stan laugh quietly at the sucking-your-own-dick debacle before closing the laptop and pushing it away. Kyle rolled onto his stomach to look at him. “You don’t wanna watch the movie anymore?”

“Nah,” Stan said. “I just wanna talk to you.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know. Anything. I just miss you talking to me.”

“What do you mean? We’ve been talking all day.”

“I know, but it’s pretty much all the talking you’ve done to me since I left.”

His chin rested on Stan’s breastbone. Kyle furrowed his eyebrows, trying to decipher what this look on Stan’s face was. “That’s not true,” he said.

“It’s kind of true.”

“No, it’s not, I texted you every couple of days. What’re you talking about?”

“Well, yeah. But it was always just a few minutes at a time. And anytime I try to call you, you never pick up.”

“Well, I’m busy. And you know I don’t like talking on the phone.”

A shy smile fell on Stan’s face, his hand sitting plainly on Kyle’s head, eyeing him with a calm, wistful reverence. His gaze flitted to the opposite side of the room for a second. “I know,” he said quietly. “I just thought maybe you would since it was me.”

And just like that, Kyle came to regret every time he watched his phone ring, reading the name _Stan_ suddenly pop onto the screen and waiting for the tone to pass, a sick fear tumbling through his chest like a killer grazing by the closet he hid in. He would wait the agonizing thirty seconds for the call to drop because he was neither brazen nor insensitive enough to press _ignore_. But talking to Stan in any form that wasn’t in person, wasn’t in his car or his bedroom or on a plastic table outside miscellaneous fast-food restaurants, was never good enough. There was no substitute for the real thing.

Kyle eased off his chest and laid up against the headboard with him. His room was almost unsettlingly quiet, the only noise a persistent bustling from downstairs, the echo of the living room TV. Stan withdrew his hands and laid them flat on his stomach. “It’s so weird without you, dude,” he said. “Sometimes I wake up and I’m like, ‘I wonder what me and Kyle are gonna do today,’ and then I remember that you’re three-thousand miles away.”

“It’s more like a thousand miles.”

Kyle peered out of the corner of his eye, watching Stan smirk and toss a listless punch to his arm. It never hurt, because Stan would never _really_ hurt him. Not now, anyway. “Would it kill you to let me wear my heart on my sleeve for five minutes?”

“It might.”

They rested in bed and took turns looking from the ceiling to glance at the other. The quiet never bothered Kyle; it was the only time when he could sort through his thoughts with any real clarity. He thought about what Stan had said and felt his stomach pulse in tiny flutters—he couldn’t tell if it was from guilt or hunger. There was a distressing foreignness in being with him again. Stan arrhythmically tapped his fingers against his hand, but was relatively still. Kyle almost preferred it this way, but when Stan was silent for this long, it usually meant something was amiss.

“Tell me everything you missed about me,” Kyle said.

“I missed how annoying you are.”

Kyle nudged him forcefully with his shoulder, pouting as Stan scrunched his nose and grinned. “I’m being serious. You wanna wear your heart on your sleeve? You have my permission, go ahead.”

“I _was_ being serious,” Stan said. “You irritate the shit out of me in the best way possible.”

“Well, that’s _lovely_ , Stan. Please, tell me more about how irritating I am.”

“ _That_ , right there—that smarmy, sarcastic way you talk.”

“ _Smarmy_?”

“Yes, smarmy. You’re very smarmy, Kyle.”

“I am not!”

“And that’s the second thing I missed,” Stan said, holding up two fingers.

“What is?”

“How you’re never wrong. Even when you are.”

“I’m allowed to disagree with blatant character assassination, Stan. I mean, smarmy? Really?”

“You are! See? You’re not wrong. Even though you _are_ very, very smarmy.”

Kyle rolled his eyes. Stan tried to hush his laughter, mocking Kyle’s use of the phrase _character assassination_ to himself, and cackled more deeply, his shoulders bouncing with each breath. It was charming and bothersome. Part of Kyle felt he should be embarrassed, but he wasn’t. What he felt was oddly closer to pride.

After some time, Stan quietly said, “I missed being able to tell you anything. God, you’re the only person I can do that with, y’know. Like, I don’t have to worry what you’re gonna think about me.”

“Yeah, no worries,” Kyle grinned, “my opinion of you can’t possibly be any lower.”

Stan sighed, endeared and exhausted by his sarcasm, turning on his side and propping his head up on his wrist. “What’d you miss about me?” he asked.

“Everything.”

“That’s not an answer, dude.”

“Well, it’s _my_ answer.”

Stan demanded he name one thing specifically, but there wasn’t any _one_ quality that Kyle could pinpoint; Stan was a package deal, every detail about him just as important as all else. It was picking him up every day for school, Stan sitting at his bedside when he was sick, wasting his Saturdays watching the same movies and playing the same video games with Kyle when he could’ve been out on dates with girls. It was when they were little and Stan would just stand next to him at the bus-stop and say he liked his new snow boots.

“I don’t know, dude,” Kyle said, “I just missed…you.”

Stan nodded, accepting he wouldn’t be able to wrangle a better response out of him. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then pursed his lips. Kyle stared at him for a minute before Stan said, “Can I ask you something?”

“What?”

“What did you and Craig talk about at Token’s party?”

Panic drummed in Kyle’s chest, and he quickly pinched his eyebrows—to pretend he had no idea what Stan was talking about.

“At Token’s party, when we were, uh, on the floor,” Stan said, “Craig just took you outside and you were out there for a while. What did you guys talk about?”

“I, uh—I told you, he just helped me stop crying.”

“Yeah, but how? Like, what did he say to you?”

“I don’t know, Stan, why does it matter? Why do you care?”

“I don’t know! I just do!”

Stan flopped back onto the pillows and huffed. He suddenly felt a million miles away, back in California, the Stan next to Kyle nearly a mirage. “It’s been bugging me for weeks,” he said.

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” Stan mumbled. “I guess, it’s just like. I’m the one who did that to you, so I should’ve been the one to fix it. Not…fuckin’ Craig.”

Kyle almost wanted to smile. It was apparent that Stan was suffering something akin to jealousy, and it was as vindicating as it was pathetic, sweet. Craig didn’t seem to understand Kyle’s fixation with Stan, either, declaring Stan to be flighty, presumptuous and oblivious. He thought Kyle could do better if he wanted, or at least not waste his time on the tragic connective tissue of all gay men: the straight best friend. But Craig didn’t, and couldn’t, know him the way Kyle did—he wanted to think no one ever could.

“I know what I missed about you,” Kyle said.

“What?”

He picked at his nail. There was only one thing he could think of, and was wholly unsure of how it would be received. But fortune favors the bold, as the saying goes.

“I missed when you kissed me,” he said.

Kyle deliberately avoided letting himself look at Stan, afraid of his reaction. He could feel his eyes on him, searing, burning, a mild fear creeping over his skin. It would be a moot endeavor to force a laugh, or say _Just kidding_ , because there was no convincing way to pretend he didn’t think about it at least once, twice, ten times a day. The temptation was too much. When he met Stan’s gaze, he was blinking idly, unmoving. “Yeah?”

“I…yeah.”

A comforting blend of relief and surprise oozed through Stan’s voice when he said, “I, uh…I missed that, too.”

Stan dropped down next to him, hand curled beneath his ear, giving him that same goofy smile as before. Kyle always felt so safe in this room—nothing from the outside world could reach them here, could haze or harm him on Stan’s unmade bed or in his sheets.   

“Do you, uh…do you wanna do it again?”

Kyle shook his head, maybe a little too eagerly. The room was smaller now, less inviting, and it invited the same curdle of nervousness he used to get off-stage during the plays. Stan’s hand trickled up his jaw like a spider, the rough pads of his fingertips and the thin layer of dirt beneath the beds of his nails stirring an unnamed need unlike anything else in the pit of his chest. It should feel wrong—or at least a little weird—and it worried Kyle that there was not a single word strong enough to convey just how right it felt to have Stan hovering over him, his dark eyebrows and light eyes, lively and tired all at once. He felt sick with love.

With a ragged little laugh, Stan nuzzled their mouths together. The kiss on Token’s couch was sweet, dry—and this was too, at first, but Kyle was wholly unprepared when he felt Stan’s tongue searching for his, an alarming tingle in his hands and stomach like he’d been strapped to a live wire. A tiny hum bobbed in Stan’s throat and Kyle wished he could swallow it, absorb every single second of this.

Kissing was one thing, he thought. He figured a significant portion of men probably kiss another man at some point in their lives just to know what it feels like. But there was a willing appetite to the way Stan’s hand drifted down his chest, his ribs, delicately slipping beneath the hem of his shirt. Kyle couldn’t believe he was prepared to spend the rest of the life without this; he told himself he was content to just be Stan’s friend—that’s it! Nothing more! This was his white whale, but instead of killing him, it was sucking his bottom lip and stroking its thumb across the hair on his stomach, and, oh God, the way it was—

“Hey, turd, mom wants you to…oh, my God.”

Stan ripped himself away from Kyle, glaring at his sister in the doorway. “You ever try fucking knocking first?”

“I didn’t think you two were gonna be up here sucking face,” she sneered. Her braces were long gone, but she still talked with a mouthful of spit.   

Stan snarled his lip and chucked a pillow at the door. Shelly retreated without finishing her thought; she could be heard laughing to herself outside the door, muttering something unintelligible.

Stan scowled and shook his head, returning to Kyle. His pressed his hand back to Kyle’s bare stomach when he asked, “What, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing! Just, like…do you think she’ll say anything? To that guy, or your mom or something?”

“I don’t care if she does,” he breathed. “Fuck her.”

 Kyle was too afraid to ask what this meant, terrified that Stan might pull away and decide he wasn’t in the mood to indulge Kyle’s private fantasies any longer. He kissed him again, a quick peck to the lips, and sunk down next to him. “You have goosebumps,” he said.

“What?”

“On your stomach,” he said, smiling. “You have goosebumps.”

“Oh.”

Stan seemed so amused by his titillated skin. He dragged his fingers in tiny circles around Kyle’s navel, looking so utterly pleased with himself, his eyes sleepy and warm. He stared at Kyle. “You know that girl I said I went on a date with?” he asked.

“Yeah?”

“She had red hair,” Stan said, his bashful grin wavering. “I mean, it was dyed, but…it made me think of you.”

Kyle grabbed at Stan’s hand, certainly going half-crazy when he said, “Stan, I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“No, I mean it,” Kyle said. “I love you as in, I’m uh. In love with you.”

Stan smirked. “I know. That’s what I meant.”

He burrowed his face into Kyle’s neck, giving him tiny kisses, and Kyle prayed that if he was dead, he stayed dead or if he was dreaming, that he stayed asleep forever, because if the universe tried to separate him from Stan again it might as well tear through the very fabric of time and space. Even then, he’d find Stan again. Somehow. It might take a while, but he’d do it.    

Stan muffled, “I’m sorry I jumped in the pond,” against his collar. His voice sounded so little and apologetic, as if this were some gravely criminal confession, and Kyle burst into laughter. It came on strong; it started as a light chuckle, transforming and growing until he was weepy and bleary-eyed, unable to quit despite the pain in his sides. Stan laughed with him and pawed at his wet face.  

Looking back, he probably did overreact—or, maybe he didn’t. Kyle couldn’t tell. It all happened so fast, he had no time to think about whether it was worth it (or necessary) to jump. The idea of losing Stan in any capacity was enough; even if it was January, when the surface was strong enough to skate on, he’d dive in. If Stan managed to slip beneath the ice, somehow, he’d dive in, because it was his most basic desire to follow him wherever he went.

It reminded of when he was nine and the four of them got caught smoking at school; his mother grounded him for two weeks, yelled until she was hoarse, asking, “If your friends all jumped off a bridge, would you jump, too?!”

No, he wouldn’t; not for all of them. Certainly not for Eric. He might for Kenny, if the bridge wasn’t too high. But he’d leap from any height, any bridge with no hesitation if it was Stan. With no chance of survival—if they regretted it the second they stepped off, broke every bone in their body, drowned in sub-zero water—he would jump for Stan. At the time, he couldn’t articulate why.

And as Stan pulled the blankets over them, huddling close to him in the dark, he began brainstorming schemes to get Kyle to come with him out to California. And he knew it was only because Stan would jump for him, too.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've made it this far--congratulations! You've reached the ultimate reason this fic was written: shameless smut. I haven't written many sex scenes before, so I would greatly appreciate criticism or feedback for future reference. This idea got caught in the weird middle-area between being too long for a oneshot, but not long enough for me to make a fully-fledged chapter story beyond what's here. I may revisit this someday in the future to elaborate, but for now, I hope it's adequately satisfying as is. Thanks for reading xx

“The man has two Oscars, Sharon!”

“Yeah, and neither of them are for his acting!”

“Matt Damon obviously did most of the leg-work on _Good Will Hunting_ , anyway.”

“Well, I don’t know, I thought he was quite charming in _Shakespeare in Love_.”

Stan rearranged the food on his plate for a sixth time—no matter which way it was presented, whether the turkey was next to the green beans instead of his potatoes, he couldn’t bring himself to eat. Something about listening to their parents debate Ben Affleck’s merits as an actor for nearly twenty minutes turned him off to the entire holiday.

Kyle was similarly not hungry and only took weak bites of his stuffing and cranberries, and Stan watched as he supplemented most of his meal with a bottomless glass of wine. It was the third year in a row that Gerald and Sheila had joined his family for Thanksgiving, deeming it necessary since the two had made it known that yes, they were gay, and yes, they were dating, and yes, they were gay and dating each other.

There were a million places he would rather be, but most of all, Stan wanted to be back at baggage claim: catching sight of Kyle staring down at his phone, tapping his foot with loving impatience while waiting for him to call. He wanted to touch Kyle’s back and gently startle him again, ignore the one or two people who stared as Stan gave him a perhaps too-long kiss he hoped would go unnoticed in the terminal—not that he was a particularly big deal in his own mind, but maybe he was to someone else.

He wanted to be in bed with the door locked and Kyle curled against him.

“Stan, back me up here!” his father said, “don’t you think Ben Affleck’s a good actor?”

He grunted in response and stuffed a slice of turkey in his mouth, causing Randy to groan, “Oh, what does he know?” when his mother laughed in victory.

“Ben Affleck sucks ass,” Ike said flatly.

“Language, young man!”

“You’re like, twelve,” Shelly said to him dismissively, “what would you know about good acting?”

Gradually, their heated discussion gave way to a flourishing brawl; the fork in his father’s hand jolted at the tightened grip around it, his voice beginning to rise when he realized the only people on his side were Sheila and Shelly, desperate to convince himself as well as everyone else that he wasn’t wrong. Kyle’s eye bounced across the table like a spectator in the stands of a stagnant tennis match. He reached to top off his half-empty glass with more wine when Stan swatted his hand away, causing him to huff and slump back in his chair. Shelly’s new boyfriend—one of her adjunct college professors in his forties—waxed poetic about the “art of cinema,” lecturing them on the difference between a film and a movie, and Stan worried if he rolled his eyes any harder they would get stuck in his head.

Kyle bumped him with his elbow and smiled, a warm, slightly dazed look in his eye when he rose from the table and toed down the hall. He beckoned Stan to the bathroom when he turned in his chair. No one seemed to notice, or care, when they disappeared from the dining room.

Stan asked, “You all right?” as he closed the door behind him.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Kyle said, smiling. “I just wanted to be alone with you. My family is driving me nuts.”

Stan chuckled and warmly took his hand. “Mine too.”

He let Stan take him in his arms, swaying lightly as he rubbed his back. The lingering discomfort of another conjoined family dinner immediately melted away, and Kyle happily sighed into his shoulder. Stan was the perfect stress ball: firm, yet soft, and never too far away when need be.

“Are you drunk?” Stan asked.

An errant finger began to creep up Kyle’s neck, finding its home in his hair. He couldn’t understand Stan’s endless obsession with his hair—whenever the opportunity presented itself, he was reaching over to dig his way into Kyle’s scalp as if it held some immeasurable secret. Stan peered down at the tempered glower on his face, smiling with amusement, holding him close.

“No, I’m not drunk,” he said sternly. “Why, do I seem drunk?”

“Kind of.”

“Are _you_ drunk?”

Stan laughed, “I wish.”

Stan gifted him an innocuous peck to the ear that quickly melded into feverish kissing, noses bumping against each other, reluctantly stifling their low moans. The taste of cranberry sauce and buttery potatoes was better on Stan’s tongue than it was on his dinner plate, and Kyle suddenly felt much too warm—and too tight—in his dress shirt and slacks. He reached to run the cold water.

“I can’t wait until later,” he mumbled when he returned to Stan’s mouth. “I want you now.”

“ _Right_ now? Like, here, in the bathroom?”

“Yes.”

Stan bit his lip, mulling over his proposal. They were less than twenty feet from the dining room, and he didn’t have a vested confidence in the thickness of his walls. But Kyle had asked so nicely. It was all he had been thinking about coming home, on the plane, in the car—between passing the rolls to Gerald and entertaining Sheila’s prying, the only thought rolling through his head was that of Kyle writing beneath him in bed. It was crass, and wrong, and it only intensified his desire—the dull stiffness between his legs. He couldn’t wait either and nodded in agreement. “Okay,” he said. “Yeah. But just real quick. And you have to be quiet.”

“I will, I’ll be—”

“I mean it, Kyle, you _gotta_ be quiet, you get so—”

“I’ll be quiet,” he insisted a little too loudly. “I promise. I can be quiet.”

Stan smiled and gave his hair a light tug, Kyle’s head lolling against his hand as he asked to be bent over the sink.

He did as he was told; he broadly swiped various toiletries out of the way and pressed Kyle to the counter. Slipping his finger around one of Kyle’s belt loops, he wrangled his slacks down to his ankles, boxer-briefs following. As Stan undid the zipper of his pants, Kyle turned over his shoulder to look at him. “I want you to talk dirty to me,” he said.

“Ah, come on, Kyle.”

“ _Please_. I love it when you do.”

Dirty-talk was something he was hopeless at; Kyle went crazy for it, but Stan he would nearly always end up laughing—or try desperately not to—in the middle of it. There was something so mean and ludicrous about telling Kyle how hard he would fuck him. He didn’t see the appeal; he was already fucking him, wasn’t he? What was the point in hearing it? It wasn’t any easier when Kyle suggested they try over the phone—in fact, that had been even worse. But the adrenaline rush from bathroom-sex with their family a mere hallway away might help acclimate himself to the inherent embarrassment.

“Okay, all right,” he hushed. “God, you’re like, _starved_ for sex.”

“I am, I haven’t seen you in three months. I missed you so much.”

Kyle was very much the same way when he returned home during the summer, and every time before that. Earlier in May, he came back a week early without telling his parents and they spent every day in a cheap motel out by the highway, talking and kissing and fucking until it was physically painful to do so. The dingy sheets were much more comfortable once bathed with Kyle’s sweat.

Stan smiled as he reached for a small bottle of hand lotion he knocked to the floor—it would have to do. It felt like something close to a big deal whenever they had sex without a condom, but his wallet was still in his jacket pocket in the living room, and it seemed much too conspicuous to stroll back and forth between the house when they were supposed to be indulging their parents in whatever these holiday dinners were supposed to mean. He coated them both liberally with the fragrant cream, leaning down to whisper, “I missed you, too.”

“God, tell me that later,” Kyle said. “Don’t get all sensitive on me right now.”

Stan rolled his eyes, Kyle giving him a frisky sneer in the mirror. The sink continued to run, and he prayed that would be enough to conceal any of the noise he knew Kyle would make. He tried not to imagine his parents shifting uncomfortably in their seats, Gerald and Sheila in abject horror, his sister snickering to herself.

Kyle shuddered and went limp against the counter as he put the tip in, a high-pitched whimper wavering in his throat. It was always so endearing to watch him, normally domineering and controlling anywhere else, utterly crumble into nothing once Stan was inside him. Part of him was unsure how much of this was an act, but Kyle always came away more than a little speechless; the ego boost was appreciated either way. He squeezed around Stan’s cock as he inched further in.

“So tight,” Stan breathed, laying his chest to Kyle’s back. “You didn’t stretch for me at all, did you?”

Kyle shook his head in his arms, uttering, “Uh-uh,” as Stan’s fingers crept along his thighs. It tickled delightfully, his stomach flipping with anxious anticipation. Every nerve in his body was alight with the same euphoric pain, the same relief, the same incalculable joy.

“Bad boy.”

Kyle yipped when Stan pinched his ass, and batted his hand away when he reached to touch himself. “Every time you make a noise louder than the water,” he whispered, “I’m gonna stop until you can be quiet. Like a good boy.”

Stan kept one hand squarely planted on his spine as he stroked his cock in the other, rubbing his thumb over the slit of the head in an agonizingly slow manner. Kyle kept his head flat on the counter—it was nice and cold, a welcome comfort to his feverish face. The virile visage of Stan commanding him in the mirror only made him burn more brilliantly.

“Understand?”

“Uh-huh, mm-hmm.”

“Good.”

Stan deliberately started slow, pushing and pulling in long, lazy draws, watching as Kyle struggled to make good on his promise of silence. His cheeks were already beet-red, only a few shades lighter than his hair, fingers splayed over his mouth. Kyle was simply too much fun to tease; something as simple as knocking his legs wider apart was enough to send him reeling. He heard Kyle swallow, his mouth wet with saliva, and wished he could reach to kiss him, to lap up every ounce of the delicious, famished moans that died on his tongue. It made the crude and degrading language flow a little more naturally through his mind. “You’re such a little slut,” he growled—though ‘slut’ still came with some hesitance. Kyle loved it, for some strange reason.

“I am,” he panted. “I’m – _ah_ – just a dumb slut.”

“And whose slut are you?”

“Yours, I’m your slut.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Remembering both their families at the dinner table, he hastened his pace, caressing Kyle with the same fervor but still taking time to taunt him now and again by letting has hand fall away, before he would inevitably beg Stan to put it back. Every time the tracks of his zipper scratched against his ass, Kyle licked his lips, eyebrows upturned, and Stan’s heart thundered in his chest. He leaned down toward Kyle’s neck, trailing his tongue along his shoulder. “I love the way you taste.”

“Bite me.”

The request caught him by surprise, though he was nothing if not a people-pleaser. Especially if that person was Kyle. Stan met his bashful eye in their reflection, and kept it as he firmly pressed his teeth to skin, gauging how much force to use by how far back in his head Kyle’s eyes rolled. He nipped at him roughly like a teething kitten, tracing his canine tooth all along his shoulder, holding his soft skin in playful bites. Gliding his tongue over the reddened indents, Kyle mewed loudly over the rushing faucet. Stan gave his ass another sharp pinch before removing his hands and making good on the promise to stop; Kyle protested by tremoring in place, groaning lowly into his hands.

“I told you I’d stop if you couldn’t be good.”

“I can, I can be good, I’ll be a good boy.”

Stan twisted from view, pursing his lips to hold back the urge to laugh—when was doing so well! It was incredibly difficult, and it took him half a minute before he could stifle the chuckle that bobbed in his throat. _I’ll be a good boy_ —it sounded like something a peasant child might say if he was caught stealing a loaf of bread. It was plainly pathetic and sweet coming from Kyle, who in every other aspect, was objectively a very, _very_ good boy. He let him tremble for a handful longer before resuming. “I’ll be quiet,” Kyle mumbled.

“Good boy.”

He rhythmically bucked his hips, Kyle twitching as he tenderly groped his cock, kissing his back and leaving a glistening line of saliva amidst the sweat between his shoulder blades. It amused him to see just how much Kyle needed to fight the impulse to wail, biting his lip in tortuous submission. When it was just the two of them in that motel, sunset to sunrise, Kyle moaned until his throat was raw—his voice was gone the next morning. Stan thrusted sharply, Kyle catching another yelp in his hands, drawing in a hushed, staggered breath instead. “You like that?”

“Yes, oh God, yes, I love it when you fuck me.”

 “Yeah, you like getting fucked?”

“Mm-hmm, I – _ahh_ – I want it harder.”

“Harder?”

“ _Mmm_ , yeah…yes, harder.”

Stan curled his free hand at the crook of Kyle’s neck to leverage himself, thrusting his hips with all the vigor his body would allow, his own breath beginning to taper out and escape him. Outside, he could hear the raised voices of his mother and sister arguing about something, and he was so wholly _elated_ he wasn’t there to sit through it. There existed an infinite number of universes, and he pitied the poor carbon-copy of himself who would presently be slumped over the same yearly Thanksgiving meal while his mother pleaded for Shelly to find someone—anyone—her own age. They seemed to have adjusted seamlessly to their nearly six-minute absence. Thinking at length about their families at the table was disrupting his focus, and he quickly willed it away. He pressed his forehead to Kyle’s back, trickled with goosebumps at the sensation of Stan’s warm, moist breath. After a long, heavenly minute, he felt that subtle, full-body jerk, and Stan grinned as he brought everything to a halt. Kyle cried in ecstatic torment.

Stan rested his chin on Kyle’s shoulder and whispered, “What do you want?” sweetly in his ear. He already knew the answer. Kyle lifted his head from the rim of the sink, panting erratically.

“I want – _nngh_ – I wanna come.”

“I don’t think you earned it yet.”

“Please, Stan, I’m… _ah_ , I can’t—”

“Shh.”

Though he was beginning to hum and whimper slightly too loud, Stan was fixated on nothing else but pleasing him. Kyle was the easiest puzzle he ever put together, expertly versed in all the right ways to touch him, caress him that would cause the jigsaw pieces to effortlessly fall back in place. He stirred his hips, unhurried, manifesting most of his prowess in nimbly stroking Kyle’s cock, slick with artisanal lavender hand lotion, gripping him firmly and circling his thumb around the head. The proximity of his mouth to Kyle’s ear caused him to shiver, and Stan could feel his skin jump when he ever so gently brushed his roaming hand about the hair on his stomach. Even in his cute little Chelsea boots, he could sense Kyle’s toes curling. His back arched, thighs quaking, and Stan grinned when Kyle melted against the marble countertop as he came in his hand. He resisted the temptation to praise him once more as a good boy.

Stan pulled out and rinsed his hand beneath the running water. He laughed at the sleepy, satisfied bliss awash on Kyle’s features, still moaning breathlessly as he reached under the sink for a washcloth. If they weren’t eventually expected back in the dining room, Stan would scoop him in his arms and carry him to his bed, relishing in the way Kyle would cling to him affectionately beneath the covers. He scrunched his face in close, pressing tiny kisses to his cheek and nose. “Feel better?” he asked.

“Mm-hmm…thank you.”

Kyle’s knees wavered as he straightened to stand; despite Stan rushing to keep him upright, they ended up collapsing next to the bathtub. Kyle chuckled and kept his face buried in his arms even as Stan tried to pry them away. Surely the sound of them hitting the floor had alerted someone. They sat with their backs to the wall and leaned on each other, Kyle sighing happily as he nuzzled into Stan’s shoulder, pants still around his ankles.

When he went to give Kyle another kiss, he had a sad, concerned expression on his face. “What, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Kyle said, “it’s just that you didn’t, uh…you know.”

Stan shook his head and smiled. “I’m building up my reserves for later.”

Kyle snorted, still slightly shaken with post-coital reverie. His hands curled around Stan’s arm—his beloved _throwing_ arm. “Is jerking me off a sufficient work-out for your biceps?” he asked.

“I’m willing to bet you’re responsible for half the muscle in this arm.”

“Only half?”

“Maybe sixty-forty.”

They kissed quietly when a hasty knock on the door startled them both. From the other side, Ike flatly asked, “Are both of you in here?” His voice sounded much deeper than Stan remembered it last time.

“Uh, yeah,” Kyle said, clearing his throat, “I, uh, had something in my eye, Stan was helping me get it…get it out.”

“What was in your eye?”

“It was just uh, an eyelash. I’ll be out in a minute.”

“An eyelash.”

“ _Yes_ , an eyelash.”

With a held breath, they cautiously watched the door, and Kyle allowed himself to a relax when there wasn’t a further response. He rested against Stan’s shoulder, wanting to live inside this moment on the bathroom floor forever, before they would need to make themselves presentable again. At the sound of a small _click_ , he turned in time to catch his brother easing open the door with a butter knife twiddled in his hand, and he rushed to conceal their stark indecency. “Oh, Jesus Christ—Ike!”

“Thought so.”

“Will you just go back to the table?!”

“Your thighs are like, super white, Ky.”

Kyle quickly bundled a towel and threw it at the gap, sending Ike retreating as he snickered something unintelligible. The door jammed back into place, his brother’s footsteps fading back down the hallway. Kyle grunted angrily as he fell back onto Stan, who rested against the top of his head. “God, he’s such a little prick.”

“Don’t worry about him,” Stan muffled into his hair. “Who cares?”

“ _I_ care. I’d rather my little brother not be involved in our sex life in literally any capacity. Jesus, what if he was standing out there the entire time?”

“Oh, you’re being paranoid.”

“Am I?”

“Probably.”

Kyle sighed in reluctant agreement, though he appreciated the room left for debate in Stan’s choice of words. “Ugh, I just—this is exactly the kind of shit he would lord over my head. The last thing I need is him running to my mom and telling her we were fucking. Or, God forbid, my dad.”

“I don’t care,” Stan said, soothing his hair. “I want them to know.”

Kyle blushed and rolled his head, letting himself lean on Stan.

“June can’t get here fast enough,” he grumbled.

“It’s not that far away now.”

“I can’t wait.”

Only Ike acknowledged them when they returned to the table, the rest of them either nearing the tail-end of an argument or igniting a new one. Stan waggled his eyebrow as he took a lukewarm bite of his potatoes, knocking their knees together under the table. Kyle smiled and tucked a few stray strands of hair behind his ears. It was overly-paranoid to think either his family or Stan’s would bother to stop their inane cross-talk long enough to hear them, but suddenly this didn’t bother him. He grinned at his parents when they asked if he agreed with them—he wasn’t sure what he was agreeing to, but it didn’t matter. He was in an agreeable mood.

Randy’s drunken pontificating that letting them sleep in the same bed at sleepovers is what made them gay no longer bothered him, and he didn’t roll his eyes at Sharon when she chided Randy while offering the two of them passive encouragement. None of it would matter soon enough.

In a few months, he’d be living with Stan in Los Angeles in his modest little apartment only a couple miles from the ocean. He could finally return home at night to no one else but Stan; they would get to crawl in bed together and not worry about whether the door was locked. June was still a considerable length away, but it no longer felt like forever. He _could_ wait for it now—and Kyle would, patiently, so long as it meant that Stan’s voice was the first he heard in the morning, nuzzling his nose deep into the scent of that generic, off-brand shampoo and kissing him deeply through stale morning-breath, because he’d never again have to wait for Stan. He’ll always be right there.


End file.
